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Wooed and Married: A Novel 1876 [Leather Bound]
Leather Binding on Spine and Corners with Golden Leaf Printing on round Spine (extra customization on request like complete leather, Golden Screen printing in Front, Color Leather, Colored book etc.) Reprinted in 2019 with the help of original edition published long back [1898]. This book is printed in black & white, sewing binding for longer life, Printed on high quality Paper, re-sized as per Current standards, professionally processed without changing its contents. As these are old books, we processed each page manually and make them readable but in some cases some pages which are blur or missing or black spots. If it is multi volume set, then it is only single volume, if you wish to order a specific or all the volumes you may contact us. We expect that you will understand our compulsion in these books. We found this book important for the readers who want to know more about our old treasure so we brought it back to the shelves. Hope you will like it and give your comments and suggestions. - eng, Pages 524. EXTRA 10 DAYS APART FROM THE NORMAL SHIPPING PERIOD WILL BE REQUIRED FOR LEATHER BOUND BOOKS. COMPLETE LEATHER WILL COST YOU EXTRA US$ 25 APART FROM THE LEATHER BOUND BOOKS. {FOLIO EDITION IS ALSO AVAILABLE.}
524 pages, Leather Bound
First published September 10, 2010
7 people want to read
About the author
Rosa Nouchette Carey
230 books6 followersRosa Nouchette Carey wrote about forty novels, many of which achieved great popularity. Her fiction focused on domestic and family themes, and her plots and characters generally reflected a conservative outlook. In her youth, Carey tried to quench her longing to write, believing that it was impossible to combine literary achievement with a useful domestic life. But her writing won out, and she never married. Although her literary reputation was not high, her works sold well, remaining in print from 1868 until 1924.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
February 20, 2024
No, reading this book will not kill you, despite its history.
Seventeen-year-old Dymphna (“Dym”) Elliott, keeps losing governess jobs because she is insufficiently submissive; Wooed and Married begins as Dym, though getting along beautifully with her young charge, Edith, tangles with Edith’s beautiful but selfish older sister Beatrix, and is sent home in disgrace to Dym’s saintly brother Will, vicar of a poor London parish. Fortunately, Edith’s and Beatrix’s cousin, Guy Chichester, recruits Dym to be a nurse and companion to his aging mother, who is going blind. Most of the novel takes place at Guy’s estate, Ingleside, and nearby Nidderdale. Dym gradually learns that Guy (object of her hero worship) has long loved a neighbor, Honor Nethecote; Honor’s older brother, Humphrey—considerably older—falls in love with Dym. As descriptive copy at the end of the book says, “There is plenty of romance in the heroine’s life. But it would not be fair to tell our readers wherein that romance consists or how it ends.”
While this may not be the greatest of the Victorian novels, it was a very entertaining read, and I consider Carey a worthy discovery. The characters are well drawn, and there are just enough twists and turns in the plot to retain interest. I could have done with a bit less overt foreshadowing, not that there’s much, but it’s annoying every time. There is more commentary and overt religion than most contemporary readers prefer, but as a fan of Victorian novels, I quite enjoyed it all.
The early sections, reminiscent as they are of Jane Eyre, inspired hope of a more feminist sensibility than the book quite delivers, but Dym remains a spirited young woman, and there are a few nice bits defending “strong minded” and single women (Carey herself never married): “We claim for our unmarried women the foremost place in the noble ranks of workers. Who fill our religious communities, our sisterhoods, our hospital wards? Who are our sunniest writers? Who carry on noble labours for the poor fallen of our sex? . . . The real woman, ennobled by work, and merging her identity in others, has found her right place, and can live out a glorious life, though it be not sweetened by mere earthly love. To forget herself, to live in others’ lives, to love with an unselfishness that demands little in return, to have real palpable work, and to do it with one’s whole heart and brain, and to look forward to the ‘rest that remaineth’—this is all that is needed to make the life of even the despised old maid ‘something akin to the angels.’” It’s a very Victorian feminism, of course, but what do you expect in 1875? There’s also surprisingly great attention to the hazards of childbearing for Victorian women, though again, it being 1875, one must read between the lines a little.
An 1899 newspaper story with the headline “Reading Causes Death” reports that Amanda C. Berry, seventy, died of heart failure, after a long stretch of reading aloud to her guests from Wooed and Married. After completing the novel myself (but read silently), I can understand why Mrs. Berry was “completely absorbed” by it, though I didn’t find the “excitement of the narrative” quite THAT exhausting. Still, like Mrs. Berry, I look forward to “tak[ing] up another one of equal interest”—and I’m going to look for more by Carey.
52 Book challenge: using for “picked without reading the blurb,” because there literally IS no blurb, other than one on Goodreads that is apparently for an entirely different novel; it would also work for a novel that includes a wedding (I won’t say whose) and a grieving character.
NEWTS challenge: using for Andromeda: Contains star crossed lovers; would also work for Crookshanks (Includes a character with a pet name); Expecto Patronum (Includes a happily ever after); McGonagall (Includes a matriarch figure).
Seventeen-year-old Dymphna (“Dym”) Elliott, keeps losing governess jobs because she is insufficiently submissive; Wooed and Married begins as Dym, though getting along beautifully with her young charge, Edith, tangles with Edith’s beautiful but selfish older sister Beatrix, and is sent home in disgrace to Dym’s saintly brother Will, vicar of a poor London parish. Fortunately, Edith’s and Beatrix’s cousin, Guy Chichester, recruits Dym to be a nurse and companion to his aging mother, who is going blind. Most of the novel takes place at Guy’s estate, Ingleside, and nearby Nidderdale. Dym gradually learns that Guy (object of her hero worship) has long loved a neighbor, Honor Nethecote; Honor’s older brother, Humphrey—considerably older—falls in love with Dym. As descriptive copy at the end of the book says, “There is plenty of romance in the heroine’s life. But it would not be fair to tell our readers wherein that romance consists or how it ends.”
While this may not be the greatest of the Victorian novels, it was a very entertaining read, and I consider Carey a worthy discovery. The characters are well drawn, and there are just enough twists and turns in the plot to retain interest. I could have done with a bit less overt foreshadowing, not that there’s much, but it’s annoying every time. There is more commentary and overt religion than most contemporary readers prefer, but as a fan of Victorian novels, I quite enjoyed it all.
The early sections, reminiscent as they are of Jane Eyre, inspired hope of a more feminist sensibility than the book quite delivers, but Dym remains a spirited young woman, and there are a few nice bits defending “strong minded” and single women (Carey herself never married): “We claim for our unmarried women the foremost place in the noble ranks of workers. Who fill our religious communities, our sisterhoods, our hospital wards? Who are our sunniest writers? Who carry on noble labours for the poor fallen of our sex? . . . The real woman, ennobled by work, and merging her identity in others, has found her right place, and can live out a glorious life, though it be not sweetened by mere earthly love. To forget herself, to live in others’ lives, to love with an unselfishness that demands little in return, to have real palpable work, and to do it with one’s whole heart and brain, and to look forward to the ‘rest that remaineth’—this is all that is needed to make the life of even the despised old maid ‘something akin to the angels.’” It’s a very Victorian feminism, of course, but what do you expect in 1875? There’s also surprisingly great attention to the hazards of childbearing for Victorian women, though again, it being 1875, one must read between the lines a little.
An 1899 newspaper story with the headline “Reading Causes Death” reports that Amanda C. Berry, seventy, died of heart failure, after a long stretch of reading aloud to her guests from Wooed and Married. After completing the novel myself (but read silently), I can understand why Mrs. Berry was “completely absorbed” by it, though I didn’t find the “excitement of the narrative” quite THAT exhausting. Still, like Mrs. Berry, I look forward to “tak[ing] up another one of equal interest”—and I’m going to look for more by Carey.
52 Book challenge: using for “picked without reading the blurb,” because there literally IS no blurb, other than one on Goodreads that is apparently for an entirely different novel; it would also work for a novel that includes a wedding (I won’t say whose) and a grieving character.
NEWTS challenge: using for Andromeda: Contains star crossed lovers; would also work for Crookshanks (Includes a character with a pet name); Expecto Patronum (Includes a happily ever after); McGonagall (Includes a matriarch figure).
Displaying 1 of 1 review