The Farringdons

by Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler

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.

174 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 11, 2007

About the author

Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler (1860-1929) was an English author. She was the daughter of Henry Hartley Fowler, 1st Viscount Wolverhampton and her sister Edith Henrietta Fowler was also a novelist. In 1903 Ellen married Alfred Felkin, a senior teacher at the Royal Naval School at Mottingham near Eltham. Her works include: Songs and Sonnets (1888), Concerning Isabel Carnaby (1899), A Double Thread (1899), The Farringdons (1900), Love's Argument and Other Poems (1900), Fuel of Fire (1902), Place and Power (1903), Kate of Kate Hall (with Alfred Laurence Felkin) (1904), Miss Fallowfield's Fortune (1908), The Wisdom of Folly (1910), Her Ladyship's Conscience (1913) and Ten Degrees Backward (1915).

Reviews

[Pipkia · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘The Farringdons’ was published in 1900 follows the life of proud, impetuous Elisabeth Farringdon, an middle class orphaned girl raised by her spinster cousins in the Black Country. She has a frightfully upright and proper friend called Christopher. Everyone around her is a staunch Methodist, until the arrival of Alan, who is a somewhar heretical ideological pantheist after the Hellenic model. Elisabeth explores the ideological boundaries of her world through her relationship with him, and later through her career as an independent artist.

It could have bored the socks off me, but actually it was surprisingly witty. Sort of like a slightly cheeky Charlotte Yonge: author was a strict Methodist but not insufferably didactic, even poking fun at certain structures at points. The book has a message and ending of Religious Goodness, but I can forgive that, because it was also funny and rather feminist and a lovely read. Highly recommended.

[Christopher Robinson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dull.

[Coco Gelato · Rating 3 out of 5]

like jane austen, but not as good