Desire

by Una Lucy Silberrad

Desire is the story of an Edwardian New Woman who finds fulfilment in work and love after rejecting high society. First published in 1908, Una L Silberrad’s novel of professional integrity and feminist aspirations for the right to work was praised by contemporary reviewers because ‘it satisfies the intelligence at the same time as it appeals to the emotions’.
Desire Quebell is the illegitimate daughter and only child of a wealthy financier. He brings her up in luxury, and she enjoys the pleasures of society, yet she is not a conventional Edwardian daughter. She rebels intellectually, and chooses not to marry a successful man where there is no love or honour. She admires the work of provincial novelist Peter Grimstone, and uses him to engineer the break-up of her engagement. But her father has neglected to make provision for Desire in his will, so when he dies unexpectedly, she has to leave her home without a penny of her own. She moves to a boarding house and studies secretarial work, intending to find a job before the last of her jewel money runs out. But her class bars her from employment, and she can’t make new friends with being misunderstood. Just as she faces destitution, Peter tracks her down with the offer of a job: his father has had a stroke, and Peter needs help to run the family pottery business. Will Desire consider leaving London to be a book-keeper in a small Staffordshire town, away from everyone she has ever known? But her new life at Grimstone’s is not a haven. Peter’s father is an angry, bitter man, his mother is nervous and unhappy, and his brother Alexander is an unscrupulous plotter who wants Peter out of the way. Desire must face sexual aggression as well as social suspicion before she, and Peter, find the way to happiness, in work and life.
Cornelia Wächter’s critical introduction shows how Silberrad’s novel challenged the gender stereotypes of the day, and set out different ideals for masculinity that conflicted with contemporary expectations of how men should behave. Marriage as an institution is also held up for examination: how should a modern marriage work? And what is wrong with the older model? Desire’s reconnection with nature, as she walks the moors and hills, connects to the wider point in the novel that women and men need to reconnect with their ‘primitive instincts’, as a correction to the mechanised urban alienation that Desire has escaped.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Romance

ebook

First published January 1, 1908

About the author

Una Lucy Silberrad was a British author and novelist. She was the sister of Oswald Silberrad (1878- 1960), the research chemist.

Reviews

[Peter Tillman]

Jo Walton read it in May & liked it a lot:
"This book was amazing. How has Silberrad been forgotten? I don’t understand it. This is a wonderful book about—and here I stopped typing and stared out of the window for a while with the plot and characters of Desire unspooling around me. It’s about life and how to live, and the place of art and love in life, and it’s about a woman called Desire Quebell and a man called Peter Grimstone who form a real and unlikely friendship. It’s about friendship, and making things, and doing things. It’s the kind of book you’d expect to be a classic that everyone has read or at least meant to read, not a book that sold well in 1908 and then fell down a hole. It’s really great, and I’d like everyone to read it and talk about it. Way better than The Good Comrade and I liked that a lot."
https://www.tor.com/2022/06/10/jo-wal...

Hrm. Maybe? I've not had much luck with old fiction, but I do respect Jo Walton's opinions.
Her Wikipedia biography, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Una_Luc...
lists a number of sources for her novels and other writings online. All are PD except the 2018 reprint of "Desire."

[Antenna · Rating 3 out of 5]

First published in 1908 and recently reissued, this novel by a once popular but long forgotten novelist is on the cusp between an Edwardian viewpoint of the position of women and hints of a more emancipated state of affairs.

The unsubtly named heroine Desire’s unconventional behaviour in fashionable London society could be attributed at first to her privileged position, despite her illegitimacy, as the indulged and unrestrained daughter of a wealthy London-based financier. Desire’s step-mother is highly critical, mistaking her frank enjoyment of the mental stimulus of male company for flirting, but has abdicated responsibility for trying to guide or control her.

Desire is intrigued by the straightforward honesty of Peter Grimstone, a would-be author who has managed to get a book published. She uses her connections to promote sales of the novel and is horrified when his father’s illness places Peter under the obligation to return to the provincial town of Twycross to run the family’s struggling pottery works , but the tables are turned when she suffers an unexpected blow and needs his help.

It seems like an attitude formed in the author’s Victorian childhood to describe as “the man side” of her nature, Desire’s decisive, assertive approach as she becomes involved in Peter’s pottery business. There may also be an autobiographical influence at work here, since Una Silberrad’s brother was a renowned industrial chemist who discussed his ideas with her, which may have enabled her to write confidently about Peter’s inventions for improving the production process.

There is also a somewhat inconsistent shift in the development of the two main characters as the dutiful, plodding, limited Peter is transformed into a creative, even masterful character, while Desire becomes more of a traditional, romantic heroine, concealing her budding passion and accepting her would-be lover’s reticence in a way the original bold Desire would never have done.

I agree with the initial reviews, as in “The Spectator”, which found the opening description of a London soirée too contrived and unconvincing. The portrayal of upper class London life is more endurable if assumed to be tongue in cheek, with a touch of wry humour, including Paddy the dog who lies "with his feet in the air to court further attention". The novel certainly takes off once the action moves to Twycross, and the world of work, although the tendency to caricature persists in the portrayal of Peter’s scheming brother Alexander and his unappealing gossipy wife. There are striking contrasts in the different types of female role presented: Desire as the “new woman” who can work on equal terms alongside a man; Peter’s mother as the dutiful and submissive wife who devotes herself to the needs of others, asking nothing for herself as she stifles her sociability to work away in an oppressively silent house; “Mrs Alexander” who enjoys flashy material benefits in return for being controlled and belittled by a domineering spouse.

This novel reminded me as times of Arnold Bennet’s “Anna of the Five Towns”. It is particularly strong in the vivid descriptions of the bleak beauty of the countryside round Twycross, an antidote to the drudgery of the production line.

This is a curate’s egg of a book. Although entertaining in parts with a neatly developed if somewhat contrived plot, the novel is too long and disappointed me towards the end in seeming unable to deal with deep human emotions without slipping into purple prose or pious pontificating – a result, I suppose of the author being born in 1872, religiously devout and never married.

[Shaz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rich, lovely, interesting.

[JimZ · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this book quite a bit. A bit on the long side, but it held my interest... 3.5 stars. Originally published in 1908 and recently re-issued by the Handheld Press.

This is the 4th novel I have read that is published by Handheld Press, and I have become a devotee of their books. I have read ‘Business as Usual’ by Jane Oliver Stafford (4 stars), ‘Latchkey Ladies’ by Marjorie Grant (4 stars), ‘Potterism’ by Rose Macaulay (3.5 stars), and ‘The Runagates Club’ by John Buchan (4 stars). They also publish a reissue of ‘The Caravaners’ by Elizabeth von Armin (which I read from the original issue) which I also liked a lot (4 stars).

A synopsis of this book is provided by Goodreads and it looks good to me so you can get the gist of the story there. I would quibble with the last sentence of the summary: Desire must face sexual aggression as well as social suspicion before she, and Peter, find the way to happiness, in work and life. I was not aware of any overt sexual aggression. Men hit up on her...but not aggressively it seemed to me. Some men in the book were male chauvinist pigs but that is not sexual aggression, is it? Not literally, at least it seems to me.

Here is the website of Handheld books and their oeuvre and offerings: https://www.handheldpress.co.uk/
For the Women’s Lives section which I am most interested in and where this book can be found: https://www.handheldpress.co.uk/produ...

Reviews:
• https://nowordlimit.com/2018/09/09/10...
• https://thecaptivereader.com/category... (see review of book #7)
• https://thornfieldhall.blog/2020/12/2...

[Farah Mendlesohn · Rating 3 out of 5]

A pleasant romance. Interesting, as the introduction says, mostly in its exploration of a variety of masculine roles.

[Kat · Rating 4 out of 5]

More Silberrad books. This one was via the internet archive here. The thing with these out-of-copyright books is that although they may be legally free, it seems to be available only through increasingly crunchy pdfs. This one was a scan of the physical pages.

I wasn’t as fond of this one as I was of The Good Comrade. I found the central romance slightly implausible– I couldn’t believe that a character who thrived on interacting with people could ever be happy immured in Victorian domesticity in a very small town. Still, Silberrad does have an excellent touch with characters and they certainly aren’t boring. Also contains a lot of detail about ceramic manufacture.

[Ashley Stangl · Rating 5 out of 5]

2025 reread: It's lovely when a book is even better on reread. The characters are layered, the themes lovely, the plot more complex than I remembered. There's a rough patch near the end, but otherwise it feels like a book that deserves to be a classic.

Lovely little book with a lot of exploration of the value of work in life and love. The beginning chapters are a bit rough, but after the first major plot turn the book is elevated into something much better. The story has one of my favorite romantic couples of the year while being much more than just a romance.