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The Reason Why
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.
- GenresRomanceGeoffrey Chaucer
300 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1911
5 people are currently reading
62 people want to read
About the author
Elinor Glyn
231 books34 followersElinor Sutherland was born in St Helier, Jersey, the younger daughter of Douglas Sutherland (1838–1865), a civil engineer of Scottish descent, and his wife Elinor Saunders (1841–1937).
Her father died when Elinor was two months old and her mother returned to the parental home in Guelph, Ontario, Canada with her two daughters, Lucy Christiana and Elinor.
Back in Canada, Elinor was schooled by her grandmother, Lucy Anne Saunders, in the ways of upper-class society. This early training not only gave her an entrée into aristocratic circles on her return to Europe, but it led to her being considered an authority on style and breeding when she worked in Hollywood in the 1920s.
Her mother remarried a Mr. Kennedy in 1871 and when Elinor was eight years old the family returned to Jersey. When there her schooling continued at home with a succession of governesses.
Elinor married Clayton Louis Glyn (1857–1915), a wealthy but spendthrift landowner, on 27 April 1892. The couple had two daughters, Margot and Juliet, but the marriage apparently foundered on mutual incompatibility although the couple remained together.
As a consequence Elinor had affairs with a succession of British aristocrats and some of her books are supposedly based on her various affairs, such as 'Three Weeks' (1907), allegedly inspired by her affair with Lord Alistair Innes Ker. That affair caused quite a furore and scandalized Edwardian society and one of the scenes in the book had one unnamed poet writing,
Would you like to sin
With Elinor Glyn
On a tiger skin?
Or would you prefer
To err with her
On some other fur?
She had began her writing in 1900, starting with a book based on letters to her mother, 'The Visits of Elizabeth'. And thereafter she more or less wrote one book each year to keep the wolf from the door, as her husband was debt-ridden from 1908, and also to keep up her standard of living. After several years of illness her husband died in 1915.
Early in her writing career she was recognised as one of the pioneers of what could be called erotic fiction, although not by modern-day standards, and she coined the use of the world 'It' to mean at the time sex-appeal and she helped to make Clara Bow a star by the use of the sobriquet for her of 'The It Girl'.
On the strength of her reputation and success she moved to Hollywood in 1920 and in 1921 was featured as one of the famous personalities in a Ralph Barton cartoon drawn especially for 'Vanity Fair' magazine.
A number of her books were made into films, most notably 'Beyond the Rocks' (1906), which starred Rudolph Valentino and Gloria Swanson, and she was a scriptwriter for the silent movie industry, working for both MGM and Paramount Pictures in the mid-1920s. In addition she also had a brief career as one of the earliest female directors.
In 1927, by which time she had published 32 novels, she once again appeared in some verse of the day. Songsmith Lorenz Hart immortalised her in his song 'My Heart Stood Still' when he wrote,
I read my Plato
Love, I thought a sin
But since your kiss
I'm reading missus Glyn!
She was so universally popular and well-known in the 1920s that she even made a cameo appearance as herself in the 1928 film 'Show People'.
As well as her novels, she wrote wrote magazine articles for the Hearst Press giving advice on 'how to keep your man' and also giving health and beauty tips. In 1922 she published 'The Elinor Glyn System of Writing', which gives an insight into writing for Hollywood studios and magazine editors.
In later life she moved to the United Kingdom, settling in London. She wrote over 40 books, the last of which was 'The Third Eye' (1940) and she died in Chelsea on 23 September 1943, being survived by her two daughters.
Gerry Wolstenholme
November 2010
Her father died when Elinor was two months old and her mother returned to the parental home in Guelph, Ontario, Canada with her two daughters, Lucy Christiana and Elinor.
Back in Canada, Elinor was schooled by her grandmother, Lucy Anne Saunders, in the ways of upper-class society. This early training not only gave her an entrée into aristocratic circles on her return to Europe, but it led to her being considered an authority on style and breeding when she worked in Hollywood in the 1920s.
Her mother remarried a Mr. Kennedy in 1871 and when Elinor was eight years old the family returned to Jersey. When there her schooling continued at home with a succession of governesses.
Elinor married Clayton Louis Glyn (1857–1915), a wealthy but spendthrift landowner, on 27 April 1892. The couple had two daughters, Margot and Juliet, but the marriage apparently foundered on mutual incompatibility although the couple remained together.
As a consequence Elinor had affairs with a succession of British aristocrats and some of her books are supposedly based on her various affairs, such as 'Three Weeks' (1907), allegedly inspired by her affair with Lord Alistair Innes Ker. That affair caused quite a furore and scandalized Edwardian society and one of the scenes in the book had one unnamed poet writing,
Would you like to sin
With Elinor Glyn
On a tiger skin?
Or would you prefer
To err with her
On some other fur?
She had began her writing in 1900, starting with a book based on letters to her mother, 'The Visits of Elizabeth'. And thereafter she more or less wrote one book each year to keep the wolf from the door, as her husband was debt-ridden from 1908, and also to keep up her standard of living. After several years of illness her husband died in 1915.
Early in her writing career she was recognised as one of the pioneers of what could be called erotic fiction, although not by modern-day standards, and she coined the use of the world 'It' to mean at the time sex-appeal and she helped to make Clara Bow a star by the use of the sobriquet for her of 'The It Girl'.
On the strength of her reputation and success she moved to Hollywood in 1920 and in 1921 was featured as one of the famous personalities in a Ralph Barton cartoon drawn especially for 'Vanity Fair' magazine.
A number of her books were made into films, most notably 'Beyond the Rocks' (1906), which starred Rudolph Valentino and Gloria Swanson, and she was a scriptwriter for the silent movie industry, working for both MGM and Paramount Pictures in the mid-1920s. In addition she also had a brief career as one of the earliest female directors.
In 1927, by which time she had published 32 novels, she once again appeared in some verse of the day. Songsmith Lorenz Hart immortalised her in his song 'My Heart Stood Still' when he wrote,
I read my Plato
Love, I thought a sin
But since your kiss
I'm reading missus Glyn!
She was so universally popular and well-known in the 1920s that she even made a cameo appearance as herself in the 1928 film 'Show People'.
As well as her novels, she wrote wrote magazine articles for the Hearst Press giving advice on 'how to keep your man' and also giving health and beauty tips. In 1922 she published 'The Elinor Glyn System of Writing', which gives an insight into writing for Hollywood studios and magazine editors.
In later life she moved to the United Kingdom, settling in London. She wrote over 40 books, the last of which was 'The Third Eye' (1940) and she died in Chelsea on 23 September 1943, being survived by her two daughters.
Gerry Wolstenholme
November 2010
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
May 11, 2024
The heroine was too cold for me. The misunderstanding went on for way too long. And the hero was not assertive enough. I was hoping for some good angst, but their pride and determination to not show their emotions made it difficult to feel anything but frustration. It gets 3 stars just for the writing and the fact that I was compelled to read til the end, despite being a little bored with their self-inflicted drama.
September 8, 2018
3.5
"Какви чудни създания са жените! Всеки мъж би могъл да се справи с тях, ако взима под внимание темперамента им, а не думите им."
"Какви чудни създания са жените! Всеки мъж би могъл да се справи с тях, ако взима под внимание темперамента им, а не думите им."
September 30, 2012
Countess Zara is recently widowed and poor. She has a half brother that she is responsible for and her uncle persuades her to marry a man she doesn't know so that this half brother will be taken care of with her uncle's riches. But she is very much against the marriage and considers it to be a degradation to sell herself in this way. She is also highly traumatized by the abusive relationship with her first husband and does not like men. Enter the hero! The cultivated aristocrat Tristram Tancred who has agreed to marry Zara because he has fallen for her at first sight, not for monetary reasons as she believes!
The time span of this novel is a few weeks and basically chronicles the honeymoon and after, and Tristram's disappointment to discover that his wife hates him and thinks he is a brutish animal! I found this novel to be a fun and fast read, with a great deal of the token Glyn histrionics in almost every scene. I liked the hero and his interest in "reasoning things out" and confronting problems by trying to imagine his wife's perspective as well as analyzing his own. I also like it when characters from authors' other novels pop up randomly in books, and this one makes brief mention of Hector and Theodora from Glyn's Beyond the Rocks. The "Crow" from Beyond the Rocks also shows up here as a peripheral character.
The time span of this novel is a few weeks and basically chronicles the honeymoon and after, and Tristram's disappointment to discover that his wife hates him and thinks he is a brutish animal! I found this novel to be a fun and fast read, with a great deal of the token Glyn histrionics in almost every scene. I liked the hero and his interest in "reasoning things out" and confronting problems by trying to imagine his wife's perspective as well as analyzing his own. I also like it when characters from authors' other novels pop up randomly in books, and this one makes brief mention of Hector and Theodora from Glyn's Beyond the Rocks. The "Crow" from Beyond the Rocks also shows up here as a peripheral character.
August 5, 2024
Reading Elinor Glyn novels is a bit like meeting the parents of someone you know really well. Suddenly, all their weird quirks make sense. If you want to understand literally anything about the genre conventions of romance novels, Elinor Glyn is probably the place to start.
This book also offers an interesting glimpse into upper class English life pre-First World War, and all the various convulsions the aristocracy were experiencing at the beginning of the 20th century. Sort of like Downton Abbey played straight. Included in those convulsions are several lengthy discussions about how the aristocracy are being repressed and “racial differences” in which ‘race’ refers to both Italians and poor people. All those American heiress marrying peers? Mixed-race marriages baybee. Anyway, the English are great.
The story is honestly kind of meh, since most of the drama hinges on some frankly wild misunderstandings and bizarre secrets. Zara, the heroine, is the worst offender, and she spends most of the book believing insane things based on limited evidence and refusing to provide pertinent facts, although this is attributed to her Tragic Past and being Half Foreign. Tristram, the hero, is less insane, if only because he spends most of the book being accused of insane things and being denied pertinent information, although he does get to do some wild speculation of his own, especially towards the end of the book, where he also threatens to kill Zara (in his head) when he believes she’s having an affaire.
I can’t help but feel like this book would have been more interesting had it instead focused on Francis Makrute, Zara’s uncle, a fabulously wealthy financier with impeccable manners and dubious antecedents and all of the insane things he does to woo Lady Ethelride Montfitchet, the daughter of a Duke and Tristram’s cousin.
This book also offers an interesting glimpse into upper class English life pre-First World War, and all the various convulsions the aristocracy were experiencing at the beginning of the 20th century. Sort of like Downton Abbey played straight. Included in those convulsions are several lengthy discussions about how the aristocracy are being repressed and “racial differences” in which ‘race’ refers to both Italians and poor people. All those American heiress marrying peers? Mixed-race marriages baybee. Anyway, the English are great.
The story is honestly kind of meh, since most of the drama hinges on some frankly wild misunderstandings and bizarre secrets. Zara, the heroine, is the worst offender, and she spends most of the book believing insane things based on limited evidence and refusing to provide pertinent facts, although this is attributed to her Tragic Past and being Half Foreign. Tristram, the hero, is less insane, if only because he spends most of the book being accused of insane things and being denied pertinent information, although he does get to do some wild speculation of his own, especially towards the end of the book, where he also threatens to kill Zara (in his head) when he believes she’s having an affaire.
I can’t help but feel like this book would have been more interesting had it instead focused on Francis Makrute, Zara’s uncle, a fabulously wealthy financier with impeccable manners and dubious antecedents and all of the insane things he does to woo Lady Ethelride Montfitchet, the daughter of a Duke and Tristram’s cousin.
April 8, 2018
Erano questi i romanzi che tenevano sveglie fino a notte fonda le nostre madri e le nostre zie (e forse le nostre nonne); e, visto che anch'io, quasi un secolo dopo, mi son lasciata trascinare dalla lettura, posso perdonare a Elinor Glyn un bel po' di colore, baroni polacchi o austriaci e principi russi, scontri mortali e bambini sofferenti. Posso perdonarle anche un'eccessiva attenzione alla 'razza', intesa da lei più che altro come 'lignaggio': quando scriveva, questa parola non aveva ancora dispiegato tutta la sua sinistra potenzialità.
Non le perdono però di aver trascinato l'incomunicabilità tra i due protagonisti ben oltre il lecito: quattro o cinque capitoli di malintesi potevano essere tranquillamente tagliati senza che la storia ne soffrisse.
Non le perdono però di aver trascinato l'incomunicabilità tra i due protagonisti ben oltre il lecito: quattro o cinque capitoli di malintesi potevano essere tranquillamente tagliati senza che la storia ne soffrisse.
September 21, 2019
2 Stars
It was just OK, l didn't love the hero in this book I thought he was too mushy
It was just OK, l didn't love the hero in this book I thought he was too mushy
December 20, 2023
The hero was terrible .. he was saying all over the story that he loved the heroine and he didn't act like that I mean why didn't he try to know her better first before approaching her physically
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews