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Little Ottleys #1-3
The Little Ottleys
An omnibus containing 'Love's Shadow', 'Tenterhooks' and 'Love at Second Sight'.
543 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1962
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209 people want to read
About the author
Ada Leverson
20 books15 followersAda Leverson (1862-1933), the devoted friend of Oscar Wilde (who called her the wittiest woman in the world), wrote six timeless novels, each a classic comedy of manners. Love’s Shadow, the first in the trilogy The Little Ottleys, is the perfect examples of her wit and style: no other English novelist has explored the world of marriage and married life with such feeling for its mysteries and absurdities.
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
April 20, 2023
Oscar Wilde was a very great friend of Ada Leverson, went to all her parties and promoted her as the wittiest woman in London and the best writer in England. Presumably he did this out of friendship, because its hard to see what there is in the Little Ottleys that would lead anyone to think there was any real merit in this book.
Like Wilde and, later, Noel Coward, Leverson was all about slyly-observed little comedies of the peccadillos of the upper middle classes. With a good writer this sort of subject can be very witty - the Importance of Being Earnest for example - but in the hands of a hack, like Leverson, its just plain silly and uninteresting. There is no depth to the characters so that the reader really doesn't care who is having an affair with whom, and if you don't care, then the book is a total waste of tme.
However, I can imagine this might have been successful as a women's magazine story serialized over half a dozen issues. Or perhaps, spiced up and with a sexified cover (can you have rock-star long hair and rippling muscles on a suit that works in the city a la Harlequin romances?)
It wasn't an awful book, a bit depressing maybe, but mainly it was too insubstantial and for me at least, its only plus point was the beautifully-designed cover.
Original review 3 Nov 2011. Rewritten April 2023 because it deserved more than one paragraph and 1 star and I remember the book well.
Like Wilde and, later, Noel Coward, Leverson was all about slyly-observed little comedies of the peccadillos of the upper middle classes. With a good writer this sort of subject can be very witty - the Importance of Being Earnest for example - but in the hands of a hack, like Leverson, its just plain silly and uninteresting. There is no depth to the characters so that the reader really doesn't care who is having an affair with whom, and if you don't care, then the book is a total waste of tme.
However, I can imagine this might have been successful as a women's magazine story serialized over half a dozen issues. Or perhaps, spiced up and with a sexified cover (can you have rock-star long hair and rippling muscles on a suit that works in the city a la Harlequin romances?)
It wasn't an awful book, a bit depressing maybe, but mainly it was too insubstantial and for me at least, its only plus point was the beautifully-designed cover.
Original review 3 Nov 2011. Rewritten April 2023 because it deserved more than one paragraph and 1 star and I remember the book well.
September 12, 2015
London, 1908. The pretty and delightful Edith Ottley is married to pompous Bruce. She adores her son, Archie and thinks herself content with her life in the very new, very concise, very white flat in Knightsbridge but often thought that if Hyacinth Verney wasn't a friend, life would be very dull. The beautiful and wealthy Hyacinth is in love with Cecil Reeve but it appears he is love with someone else. Is Hyacinth's heart destined to remain broken? As Edith ponders on Hyacinth's dilemma she finds her own heart suddenly beating that bit faster when she meets the clever, charming and very handsome Aylmer Ross. As the story builds the physical attraction between the two is electric. They could be the perfect couple but Edith can't dismiss the fact she is Mrs. Ottley. However, as we will discover, there is more to Bruce than meets the eye and when Edith discovers this fact, will that help to change her mind?
August 31, 2009
Ada Leverson was the woman Oscar Wilde called "the wittiest woman I know" and "the Sphinx." Her triology of novels collected as The Little Ottleys by Virago Modern Classics is both funny and brutal, a comedy of manners in which the even the public face of the people portrayed has cracks which show through their witty conversation. A splendid discovery.
May 25, 2011
The trilogy of stories about the Ottleys and their friends and acquaintances is a delicious confection of ironic observation and springy dialogue. The dramatic irony in particular is subtle and complex and very funny.
Occasionally the epigrams don't quite work, but for the most part it is like reading a mixture of Austen, Wilde and Wodehouse.
Occasionally the epigrams don't quite work, but for the most part it is like reading a mixture of Austen, Wilde and Wodehouse.
April 8, 2011
Wonderful from start to finish
June 11, 2011
This is actually three shortish novels, published in one volume and I read them one after the other, so I’ll review them together. Leverson was a close friend of Oscar Wilde, who appears, thinly veiled, in these stories. The main characters, Edith and Bruce, are also based on her own married life; the stories are in fact essentially a portrait of marriage in upper-class pre-WWI London. Leverson’s touch is light, but the depiction is rather depressing.
Most of the people in the book are so empty-headed, and their empty-headedness seems to derive from their privileged existence and consequent essential uselessness - no point, no challenge, to their lives, nothing to make, or even encourage, them to think, so they drift along, obsessing on trivialities and deceiving themselves and each other more or less constantly. Bruce is so repulsively self-centred and petulant, and Edith so compliant, despite being herself intelligent, it makes one want to scream.
A quite disturbing portrait comes near the end of the third novel, in which a chapter is devoted to describing “Lady Conroy”, who is well beyond empty-headed. She is clearly a victim of Alzheimer’s; her conversations are circular in just the way my mother’s are. Yet she putters on with the assistance of her staff and is a figure of gentle mockery among her acquaintance. She has no responsibility so her condition changes little about her life.
The portait of Wilde, as Vincy, is endearing, and our heroine does eventually get a happy ending (better than Ada, as I gather). Thank heavens for small mercies.
Most of the people in the book are so empty-headed, and their empty-headedness seems to derive from their privileged existence and consequent essential uselessness - no point, no challenge, to their lives, nothing to make, or even encourage, them to think, so they drift along, obsessing on trivialities and deceiving themselves and each other more or less constantly. Bruce is so repulsively self-centred and petulant, and Edith so compliant, despite being herself intelligent, it makes one want to scream.
A quite disturbing portrait comes near the end of the third novel, in which a chapter is devoted to describing “Lady Conroy”, who is well beyond empty-headed. She is clearly a victim of Alzheimer’s; her conversations are circular in just the way my mother’s are. Yet she putters on with the assistance of her staff and is a figure of gentle mockery among her acquaintance. She has no responsibility so her condition changes little about her life.
The portait of Wilde, as Vincy, is endearing, and our heroine does eventually get a happy ending (better than Ada, as I gather). Thank heavens for small mercies.
January 25, 2009
What a wonderful, wicked wit Ada Leverson was. I actually laughed out loud while reading this book. I was slightly irritated by the use of French in the third book as I don't speak French. (I kept wishing Landi would speak his native Italian instead so I could figure out what he was saying.) But that is a minor criticism of the work as a whole. I was awed by the wonderful character of Lady Conroy, who appears to be suffering from ADD long before the syndrome was named, as well as perimenopause. Just when I was beginning to tire of the too perfect Edith Ottley, she began to break out of her perfection and become a truly interesting character.
December 9, 2014
I remember loving these when I read them in the 1980s. I think I still have my copy on the shelves in Bryn Mawr (I certainly did for a long time), and it's driving me batty to not be able to go check and see for sure. Because, as absurd as it is, I want to know right now if I need to find a replacement copy now that I have the urge to read this again. How ridiculous is that?
April 14, 2020
This brand of humor is just up my alley. If I have any complaints, it’s that the third book drags a little, and I wish there was more continuity between them. Where do Hyacinth and Vincy disappear to?!
April 5, 2011
fantastic--and very, very funny!
August 4, 2011
Really very, very funny in an old-fashioned way. Though it's not terribly hopeful about marriage...
December 10, 2012
Still love it, 20 years on, even if Bruce does remind me of my ex.....
to-read-actual
April 13, 2021Love's Shadow - 1908
Tenterhooks - 1912
Love at Second Sight - 1916
Tenterhooks - 1912
Love at Second Sight - 1916
March 6, 2025
Charming.
July 3, 2020
This novel consists of a trilogy, first published between 1908 and 1916, and then republished by Virago Modern Classics. The author, Ada Leverson, was a friend of Oscar Wilde’s, and one can see the influence in the occasionally wry social commentary.
The Ottleys are a couple with two children, living in London. The husband, Bruce, works in the Foreign Office, and is as fatuous and annoying as it’s possible to be. The wife, Edith, is patient, charming, modest, and very pretty. In fact, I got rather tired of physical descriptions of Edith. She’s a bit too much of a paragon, and Bruce verges on the ridiculous. The novel is full of notable characters, but many of them are exaggerated to the point of caricature.
In the first book, Love’s Shadow, the Ottleys are side characters, with Bruce providing steady comic relief. The main plot concerns the complicated love life of the young, beautiful Hyacinth. She’s in love with Cecil Reeves, who is crushed out on a very sensible older woman, who tries to dissuade him. Sensible women figure greatly in this novel, with Hyacinth’s roommate Anne being another of the type, and clearly a lesbian, although this isn’t spelled out, of course.
In the second book, Tenterhooks, the focus is on Edith Ottley and the handsome and dashing Aylmer Ross. They fall in love, but Edith is still married to Bruce, who remains oblivious of the whole thing. Bruce frees her by running off with someone, but Edith nobly refuses to accept this gift of freedom, because she recognizes that Bruce’s romance won’t last long, and then he’ll be miserable without her.
In the third book, Love at Second Sight, four years have passed, and World War One is going on. Aylmer comes back, wounded, from the front, and Edith, who is convinced that they can just be friends, undertakes to cheer him up. Of course, the love between them flares up again.
Meanwhile, a mysterious lady, Eglantine Frabelle, has taken up residence in the Ottley’s house. Nobody quite knows where she came from, but the Ottleys are polite to a fault, and so they don’t inquire too much, nor do they kick her out. Madame Frabelle is fascinating, in that she is very sure of everything, and equally wrong about everything, and so she’s a perfect match for Bruce.
Occasionally, the writing is a little tedious. Leverson has a way of belaboring the point at times. But often it’s quite witty. Here are some quotes:
< Lady Cannon had a very exalted opinion of her own charms, virtues, brilliant gifts, and, above all, of her sound sense. Fortunately for her, she had married a man of extraordinary amiability, who had always taken every possible precaution to prevent her discovering that in this opinion she was practically alone in the world. >
< It was taken for granted among her acquaintances, and probably was one of the qualities that endeared her to them most, that dear Lady Everard was generally positive and always wrong. >
< For Hyacinth she always felt a curious mixture of chronic anger, family pride, and admiring disapproval, which combination she had never yet discovered to be a common form of vague jealousy. >
< Like all weddings it had left the strange feeling of futility, the slight sense of depression that comes to English people who have tried, from their strong sense of tradition, to be festive and sentimental and in high spirits too early in the day. >
< She bristled with aigrettes and sparkled with diamonds and determination. She was marvelously garrulous about nothing in particular. She was a woman who never stopped talking for a single moment, but in a way that resembled leaking rather than laying down the law. >
< She was feeling rather tired. She had spent several hours in the nursery that day, pretending to be a baby giraffe with so much success that Archie had insisted upon countless encores, until, like all artists who have to repeat the same part too often, she felt the performance was becoming mechanical. >
The Ottleys are a couple with two children, living in London. The husband, Bruce, works in the Foreign Office, and is as fatuous and annoying as it’s possible to be. The wife, Edith, is patient, charming, modest, and very pretty. In fact, I got rather tired of physical descriptions of Edith. She’s a bit too much of a paragon, and Bruce verges on the ridiculous. The novel is full of notable characters, but many of them are exaggerated to the point of caricature.
In the first book, Love’s Shadow, the Ottleys are side characters, with Bruce providing steady comic relief. The main plot concerns the complicated love life of the young, beautiful Hyacinth. She’s in love with Cecil Reeves, who is crushed out on a very sensible older woman, who tries to dissuade him. Sensible women figure greatly in this novel, with Hyacinth’s roommate Anne being another of the type, and clearly a lesbian, although this isn’t spelled out, of course.
In the second book, Tenterhooks, the focus is on Edith Ottley and the handsome and dashing Aylmer Ross. They fall in love, but Edith is still married to Bruce, who remains oblivious of the whole thing. Bruce frees her by running off with someone, but Edith nobly refuses to accept this gift of freedom, because she recognizes that Bruce’s romance won’t last long, and then he’ll be miserable without her.
In the third book, Love at Second Sight, four years have passed, and World War One is going on. Aylmer comes back, wounded, from the front, and Edith, who is convinced that they can just be friends, undertakes to cheer him up. Of course, the love between them flares up again.
Meanwhile, a mysterious lady, Eglantine Frabelle, has taken up residence in the Ottley’s house. Nobody quite knows where she came from, but the Ottleys are polite to a fault, and so they don’t inquire too much, nor do they kick her out. Madame Frabelle is fascinating, in that she is very sure of everything, and equally wrong about everything, and so she’s a perfect match for Bruce.
Occasionally, the writing is a little tedious. Leverson has a way of belaboring the point at times. But often it’s quite witty. Here are some quotes:
< Lady Cannon had a very exalted opinion of her own charms, virtues, brilliant gifts, and, above all, of her sound sense. Fortunately for her, she had married a man of extraordinary amiability, who had always taken every possible precaution to prevent her discovering that in this opinion she was practically alone in the world. >
< It was taken for granted among her acquaintances, and probably was one of the qualities that endeared her to them most, that dear Lady Everard was generally positive and always wrong. >
< For Hyacinth she always felt a curious mixture of chronic anger, family pride, and admiring disapproval, which combination she had never yet discovered to be a common form of vague jealousy. >
< Like all weddings it had left the strange feeling of futility, the slight sense of depression that comes to English people who have tried, from their strong sense of tradition, to be festive and sentimental and in high spirits too early in the day. >
< She bristled with aigrettes and sparkled with diamonds and determination. She was marvelously garrulous about nothing in particular. She was a woman who never stopped talking for a single moment, but in a way that resembled leaking rather than laying down the law. >
< She was feeling rather tired. She had spent several hours in the nursery that day, pretending to be a baby giraffe with so much success that Archie had insisted upon countless encores, until, like all artists who have to repeat the same part too often, she felt the performance was becoming mechanical. >
December 17, 2022
Three comedies of manners by the writer Oscar Wilde called 'the wittiest woman in the world'.
Whilst that might have been the case way back when these novellas were written, to this reader they are merely wry observations with some charm: "some men are born husbands; they have a passion for domesticity, for a fireside, for a home. Yet, curiously, these men very rarely stay at home. Apparently what they want is to have a place to get away from" but if you like 'this type of thing', and in the right mood I do, then you might well enjoy these.
The books form a trilogy with their heroine 'Edith Ottley' negotiating the social circles of her friends while trying to deal with her own domestic situation of arrogant hypochondriac husband and two children. There is love, of course there is!, but Leverson underpins it with a melancholy partly by its nature and partly by the social mores of the times.
At times they feel a bit too 'worthy'. They were almost impossible to read without placing the books in the context of feminist novels of the period and one can imagine Leverson perhaps being loved more by social historians than the 'general' reader and thus being given an undue weight to bear.
They are competent but not hugely entertaining compared to those who came later such as E.F. Benson or P.G. Wodehouse. Perhaps read the first one and then decide about the others?
Whilst that might have been the case way back when these novellas were written, to this reader they are merely wry observations with some charm: "some men are born husbands; they have a passion for domesticity, for a fireside, for a home. Yet, curiously, these men very rarely stay at home. Apparently what they want is to have a place to get away from" but if you like 'this type of thing', and in the right mood I do, then you might well enjoy these.
The books form a trilogy with their heroine 'Edith Ottley' negotiating the social circles of her friends while trying to deal with her own domestic situation of arrogant hypochondriac husband and two children. There is love, of course there is!, but Leverson underpins it with a melancholy partly by its nature and partly by the social mores of the times.
At times they feel a bit too 'worthy'. They were almost impossible to read without placing the books in the context of feminist novels of the period and one can imagine Leverson perhaps being loved more by social historians than the 'general' reader and thus being given an undue weight to bear.
They are competent but not hugely entertaining compared to those who came later such as E.F. Benson or P.G. Wodehouse. Perhaps read the first one and then decide about the others?
December 15, 2022
This is one of the Virago reprints of a book which came out in 1920 or so. I suppose you could call it a comedy of manners; throughout most of the book a fairly intelligent woman who spoils her children horribly puts up with a husband so obnoxious (although not, admittedly, violent, he just nags and put her down) as almost to exceed credibility. She has a somewhat idealized notion of what it is to be a wife. Inevitably she falls in love with someone else, but the happy ending of her romance takes an awfully long time, and is predicated on her husband leaving her twice, the first time returning and being forgiven. Anyway, he eventually gives her cause for divorce, so she keeps her reputation.
March 4, 2020
An enjoyable vintage novel written by a friend of Oscar Wilde.
March 25, 2024
This is a trilogy. Although I don’t think after the first book was written, Love’s Shadow (1908), that she announced the trilogy as such. If she did, her readers would be waiting for another 4 years before the second book was published (Tenterhooks, 1912) and another 8 years for the third book to be published (Love at Second Sight, 1916). But the main characters, Edith and Bruce Ottleys, are the same throughout.
I loved the first novel within the trilogy. I would give it 4.5 stars. Edith is a very nice woman, in her early 20s, Bruce is a pompous windbag, and why she married him is beyond me, but it made for a great book to read. The world revolves around Bruce....if anything goes wrong in the household it is Ediths’ fault and not his. He is also a neurotic about illness...he always appears to be sick or on the cusp of it. This passage made me laugh out loud. He thinks he is sick so he uses a thermometer to take his temperature. He reads it and he turns pale, and tells Edith to immediately fetch the doctor.
- ‘Telephone to Braithwaite. At once. Say it is urgent. Poor little Edith!’
- ‘What is it?’ she cried in a frightened voice.
- ‘I’d better not tell you,” he said, trying to hide it.
- ‘Tell me—oh! Tell me!’
- ‘It’s a 119 degrees. Now don’t waste time. ‘....
- ‘Oh, I know what it is,’ cried Edith. ‘I dipped it in boiling water before I gave it to you.’ 😅😅😅😅
She wrote the third novel during World War One and it was involved in the story. The second novel in the trilogy was OK (I would give it 3 stars), but I could have done without it, and could have done without the third novel in the trilogy (2.5 stars). The ending in the third novel (and of the trilogy) was preposterous.
Synopsis on back cover of the Virago Modern Classics reissue:
• The heroine of the three novels collected here—Love’s Shadow, Tenterhooks, and Love at Second Sight—is the delightful Edith Ottley. As we follow Edith’s fortunes we enter the enchanting world of Edwardian London. We will be bewitched by the courtships, jealousies, and love affairs of Edith’s coterie—and indeed of Edith herself—and unfailingly amused by her husband, Bruce, one of the most tremendous—if attractive—bores in literature.
Bruce sort of reminded me of Everard Weymss, the wicked character in Elizabeth von Arnim’s ‘Vera’.
Note:
A short synopsis of her life and works:
• https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/...
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lev...
These novels as well as other books of hers are available at:
https://openlibrary.org/authors/OL146... https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/auth...
Reviews:
• https://heavenali.wordpress.com/2020/...
• https://librofulltime.wordpress.com/2...
• https://mirabiledictu.org/2013/04/17/...
I loved the first novel within the trilogy. I would give it 4.5 stars. Edith is a very nice woman, in her early 20s, Bruce is a pompous windbag, and why she married him is beyond me, but it made for a great book to read. The world revolves around Bruce....if anything goes wrong in the household it is Ediths’ fault and not his. He is also a neurotic about illness...he always appears to be sick or on the cusp of it. This passage made me laugh out loud. He thinks he is sick so he uses a thermometer to take his temperature. He reads it and he turns pale, and tells Edith to immediately fetch the doctor.
- ‘Telephone to Braithwaite. At once. Say it is urgent. Poor little Edith!’
- ‘What is it?’ she cried in a frightened voice.
- ‘I’d better not tell you,” he said, trying to hide it.
- ‘Tell me—oh! Tell me!’
- ‘It’s a 119 degrees. Now don’t waste time. ‘....
- ‘Oh, I know what it is,’ cried Edith. ‘I dipped it in boiling water before I gave it to you.’ 😅😅😅😅
She wrote the third novel during World War One and it was involved in the story. The second novel in the trilogy was OK (I would give it 3 stars), but I could have done without it, and could have done without the third novel in the trilogy (2.5 stars). The ending in the third novel (and of the trilogy) was preposterous.
Synopsis on back cover of the Virago Modern Classics reissue:
• The heroine of the three novels collected here—Love’s Shadow, Tenterhooks, and Love at Second Sight—is the delightful Edith Ottley. As we follow Edith’s fortunes we enter the enchanting world of Edwardian London. We will be bewitched by the courtships, jealousies, and love affairs of Edith’s coterie—and indeed of Edith herself—and unfailingly amused by her husband, Bruce, one of the most tremendous—if attractive—bores in literature.
Bruce sort of reminded me of Everard Weymss, the wicked character in Elizabeth von Arnim’s ‘Vera’.
Note:
A short synopsis of her life and works:
• https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/...
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lev...
These novels as well as other books of hers are available at:
https://openlibrary.org/authors/OL146... https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/auth...
Reviews:
• https://heavenali.wordpress.com/2020/...
• https://librofulltime.wordpress.com/2...
• https://mirabiledictu.org/2013/04/17/...
January 6, 2021
Good dialogue.
February 11, 2023
Dnf at 40%
So many issues with this book:
1. Its very outdated, misogynistic, and just darn boring.
2. The entire plot is "everyone is having an affair with everyone and then gets sad when they catch their partner cheating on them when they're doing the same"
3. Absolutely nothing is happening just people talking about bland things and cheating on one another
4. The characters are so 2D and underdeveloped that it's a pain in the ass everytime everytime they enter the scene
So not worth the time or energy. There's countless of better things to read about than this trash
So many issues with this book:
1. Its very outdated, misogynistic, and just darn boring.
2. The entire plot is "everyone is having an affair with everyone and then gets sad when they catch their partner cheating on them when they're doing the same"
3. Absolutely nothing is happening just people talking about bland things and cheating on one another
4. The characters are so 2D and underdeveloped that it's a pain in the ass everytime everytime they enter the scene
So not worth the time or energy. There's countless of better things to read about than this trash
March 6, 2014
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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