That Lass O'Lowrie's

by Frances Hodgson Burnett

The Lancashire village of Riggan is dominated by the pit, for it not only provides employment to most of those who live there, but is also a focus for the community's hopes and fears, and the place where friendships are made and lost. Joan Lowrie, one of the pit girls, has endured hardship, and beatings from her father, for as long as she can remember, but her pride, determination to rise above her lot, and natural intelligence make her stand apart from the other girls. So it is Joan who comes to the rescue of seventeen-year-old Liz, left to care for her young baby alone and taunted by the others. And it is Joan who attracts the attention of two very different Paul Grace, the local curate, longs to help her, but finds himself unable to master his shyness and reach her; his friend Fergus Derrick, the mining engineer, is also intrigued by her. Then the new vicar's daughter, Anice Barholm, whom Grace loves with a gentle passion, comes to Riggan. Generous and warm, she is quickly taken into the heart of the community, and becomes firm friends with Fergus. As Paul sees the two drawn together in sympathetic understanding, he feels his own inadequacies underlined, and fears he may lose everything ....
Published in 1878, this is the first novel by the author of The Secret Garden and Little Lord Fauntleroy.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Historical Fiction, Ebooks, Victorian, 19th Century

158 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1877

About the author

Frances Eliza Hodgson Burnett was a British-American novelist and playwright. She is best known for the three children's novels Little Lord Fauntleroy (1886), A Little Princess (1905), and The Secret Garden (1911).
Frances Eliza Hodgson was born in Cheetham, Manchester, England. After her father died in 1853, when Frances was 4 years old, the family fell on straitened circumstances and in 1865 emigrated to the United States, settling in New Market, Tennessee. Frances began her writing career there at age 19 to help earn money for the family, publishing stories in magazines. In 1870, her mother died. In Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1873 she married Swan M. Burnett, who became a medical doctor. Their first son Lionel was born a year later. The Burnetts lived for two years in Paris, where their second son Vivian was born, before returning to the United States to live in Washington, D.C. Burnett then began to write novels, the first of which (That Lass o' Lowrie's), was published to good reviews. Little Lord Fauntleroy was published in 1886 and made her a popular writer of children's fiction, although her romantic adult novels written in the 1890s were also popular. She wrote and helped to produce stage versions of Little Lord Fauntleroy and A Little Princess.
Beginning in the 1880s, Burnett began to travel to England frequently and in the 1890s bought a home there, where she wrote The Secret Garden. Her elder son, Lionel, died of tuberculosis in 1890, which caused a relapse of the depression she had struggled with for much of her life. She divorced Swan Burnett in 1898, married Stephen Townesend in 1900, and divorced him in 1902. A few years later she settled in Nassau County, New York, where she died in 1924 and is buried in Roslyn Cemetery.
In 1936, a memorial sculpture by Bessie Potter Vonnoh was erected in her honor in Central Park's Conservatory Garden. The statue depicts her two famous Secret Garden characters, Mary and Dickon.

Reviews

[Kyly · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my first official review of anything on the internet. Frances Hodgson Burnett's first novel is a treasure.

I have already read her two most famous books: A Little Princess and also The Secret Garden. I was amazed by both books. The prose like quality of her writing swept me away. I was hooked and hoped that she had written more than just those two books.

I was thrilled to discover that she had written MANY more books! My plan is to read them all!

That Lass of O'Lowrie's is written from a Christian perspective. This is a story of redemption. It is a very cleverly told story with a culture unlike any I've ever read about before. It captured my interest at page one! There are two very distinct groups of people in this story. The author gives us a view of what daily life is like for these people. The struggles and triumphs involved whenever two groups of people struggle to live in the same place.

The only thing that makes this book less than a perfect delight to read is the way some of the characters in the story speak. The dialect is sometimes hard to understand. I believe now upon reading the entire book that the author did this for a reason.

Having to struggle at times for understanding makes the reader more actively engaged with the story and in so doing the reader better understands why there is such a difficulty for these two groups of people to understand one another. I found that as the story went on it became easier for me to understand their speaking style. Which is often true in life when two groups are in the process of resolving conflicts and creating understanding. I just had to get over my initial frustration with not understanding every word and instead focus on my desire to understand rather than my annoyance.

I am curious now more than ever to read other books written by such an amazing author!

[Jeff Wheeler · Rating 4 out of 5]

After reading a biography on FHB, I decided to look at this book, one of her first novels. Although you can definitely see her progression as a writer judging from her later books, I did enjoy this one. Reminded of North & South. She's really good at accents and it was difficult making sense of the dialogue spoken in this book. The story was inspired by her time spent in Manchester and the "lass" (Joan) was taken from someone she saw over the fence. It was a romance at heart although showed the impact of the industrial revolution on the poorer class of society. It especially was troubling how the dangers were called out by Mr Derrick and bluntly ignored by management--lives were worth the loss to them so long as it didn't hurt their profits. Glad I read it, although it was a slog at times.

[Dana Loo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Valutazione 3,5
Una delle prime opere di Frances H. Burnett, un romanzo sociale di grande interesse per l'argomento trattato e con un personaggio femminile molto particolare che al di là di una certa rudezza dovuta alle circostanze della vita, nasconde una sorprendente dolcezza e sensibilità che colpiscono molto il lettore. La sua storia è amara ma, la sua forza, l'orgoglio, la sua dignità, il desiderio di elevarsi anche per essere all'altezza dell'uomo che l'ama e che protegge a rischio della sua stessa vita sono ammirevoli. Un personaggio che si evolve pagina dopo pagina, anche cristianamente, iniziando un cammino di fede, grazie al supporto di altri protagonisti della vicenda, Anice su tutti, che vincendo l'iniziale ostilità e diffidenza del piccolo borgo minerario di Riggan, riescono con naturalezza e senza imposizioni a conquistarsi rispetto e benevolenza...

Lo stile narrativo è ancora acerbo, la traduzione non sempre impeccabile, la presenza di numerosi termini dialettali nel testo originale avrà causato non poche difficoltà, alcuni personaggi potevano essere caratterizzati meglio, ma chi ama la Burnett non può non apprezzare questo piccolo ma significativo romanzo...

[Shruthi · Rating 3 out of 5]

On the one hand, I need every talented historical romance writer to get on this level: hot, buff, competent female protag befriending and advocating for other ladies while the love interest remains quietly and consistently undone by her everything. The slow mutual yet seemingly unrequited pining was so good, I’ll need a million more of this, thanks.

On the other hand, you can keep the Victorian class moralizing and gross religious bullshit in the garbage where they belong.

[Mighty Aphrodite · Rating 4 out of 5]

Riggan, paese inglese cui dà vita la penna di Frances H. Burnett, ha il suo centro vivo e vitale nella miniera, che raccoglie intorno a sé la povertà e le difficoltà di persone senza altra prospettiva.

Il lavoro, la fatica e il pericolo sono tutto quello che queste persone conoscono: ogni volta che scendono giù nel pozzo non sanno mai se torneranno su vivi.

Tra quelle facce stanche e disilluse, però, spicca quella di Joan Lowrie, una ragazza già donna, forte e decisa, e sempre pronta a prendere le difese dei più deboli.

Il suo volto fiero attira ben presto lo sguardo ammirato di Fergus Derrick, ingegnere della miniera deciso a modernizzare quelle vecchie infrastrutture per proteggere gli operai e rendere il lavoro più agile.

Continua a leggere qui: https://parlaredilibri.wordpress.com/...

[Antof9 · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really liked it, but the phonetic dialect made me put it down more than once. I'm fine with a bit of canna, willna and summat, but this was over the top. I don't know if it's the era it was written in, the country, or the author, but it was almost impossible to read. That dialogue needs to be read out loud, and I just don't prefer that and/or read books in places where I can read out loud all the time. I almost added this to my books I couldn't finish in 2007 list several times, but I persevered :)

That said, there were several things I liked, including Joan's development, Anice (who I was sure I would dislike at the beginning), Derrick, Jud Bates and 'Robyson Crusoe' and of course, chapter 30.

I love when I find a word I don't know in a book, and I found one here. It was contumacious, which upon reading the description, is a perfect word for Sammy Craddock, as it was used in the book.

The whole Sammy Craddock/Jud Bates 'Robyson Crusoe' thing just cracked me up. I loved the cannibal discussions, the way Sammy realized that there was more to read than the morning paper, and I loved that they talked about litterytoor. It's important that 'he wur a litterairy mon.' I loved Jud learning to read quickly once he was promised the beautiful book, and I loved him reading to Sammy. I even like Mrs. Craddock sitting in on some of the readings :)

[Luke · Rating 2 out of 5]

1.5/5

When I came across the name of 'Frances Hodgson Burnett' attached to an unfamiliar title and unchildlike cover, it was akin to taking an unexpected trip back in time. I can still remember coming across the much battered covers of both 'The Secret Garden' and 'A Little Princess' while picking and choosing what contents of my library would travel with me, and I represent most of the author's readers in saying that, outside of 'Little Lord Fauntleroy', I had no familiarity with the real extent of her bibliography. Having had a reasonable amount of success in reading women who have either been restricted to the realm of children's literature, the single work, or the academic sphere at the expense of public representation, the fact that this work came when it did, bearing a more than useful publication date, seemed minorly providential. Should it not prove such, at least it was short. In hindsight, I'm glad that I hammered out that particular reservation for myself, for this work, published in 1877, was Burnett's first, and in character it seems half Gaskell ('Mary Barton' in 1848), half Twain ('Tom Sawyer' in 1876), and all of it a moralizing tract combined with apologism for the English class system. I give some credit for the effort made with the Lancanshire vernacular, but the whole plot was little more than the soft-hearted seduction of one of the chosen members of the lower class by the members of the higher, complete with much benediction paid to the rightful few and much groveling on the part of the impoverished many. In essence, there was not much difference between the the triumphant major plot and one of the tragic minor ones, save how each of the afflicted characters receive their womanly just deserts at the hands of larger society. Not something Burnett intended, I'm sure, but it would make for a good paper or two.

This book was published a good three decades before what would prove to be Burnett's most famous work, which in turn was serialized a decade before the author's death. It's been so long since I've read that bucolic fairy tale that I remember one of its film adaptations better than I do any of the text, so I can't make any conclusive analysis regarding the differences in quality between the two works. In addition, seeing as how one work is intended for adults and one is for children, one could say that there can't be as strong a comparison made. However, I do have to wonder whether the intervening decades toned down Burnett's moralizing a tad, as well as gave her a defter hand when it came to crafting characters who were more complicated than checker pieces set out against each other, the white always succeeding in converting the black. For much as I have been disappointed with my most recent appraisals of Gaskell's work in both the forms of literature and film adaptation, that author consistently goes father than Burnett does in her delineations, discussions, and even diatribes, and while the result may not go over so well, it at least gives one something to sink one's teeth into. This piece was just upper class good from a range of ignorantly benign to virtual saint, lower class poor from a range of uneducated well meaning to pure villainy, and the one seeming paragon of an intermediary between the two whom the tale cannot stop from rhapsodizing on and on about but, in all reality, gives up on her class of people so quickly for the sake of a 'proper Christian woman's place' that it's a good thing the narrative ends when it does, else the subsequent tale of this character's upward mobility would be borderline intolerable. Even the most interesting character, an incorrigible curmudgeon, turns corrigible in a seeming blink of an eye when a benefactress beats back the boogeyman of bankruptcy. This was all part of a pattern, though, as it seems that, judging from the rest of the cast of characters, if a working class character didn't have sufficient change of heart, it was the fate graveyard for them, and I imagine even Burnett recognized she had put too much in this almost three dimensional character to off him as summarily as she did others of more of a one note existence.

Burnett has many other books intended for adults to her name, although many of them are like this one in terms of 'The Secret Garden' having anywhere between 5000 to almost 10000 as many ratings as they do on this website. A couple of them have even been published by that general publisher of somewhat older works by women, Persephone Books, although my repeated encounters with that imprint have given off the sense that that particular line thought the Virago Modern Classics to be too 'diverse' in its reach, and the repeated undertones of racism mentioned in reviews of more than one work, including one of Burnett's, makes me wonder. In any case, much as I would have preferred that this work have revealed itself to be an underread delight, it's not as if Burnett really needs that manner of support. All in all, this book served the purposes that I honestly needed it for, and while I wouldn't mind rereading some of Burnett's works for children and perhaps exploring some of her others for adults, that won't be happening for some time. There's still a healthy amount of 19th c. woman writers that I have not yet encountered, and I'm still looking for a work published in the 1860s to slot into this year's challenge reads that, ideally, will have been written by one of them. True, there's a chance that that effort will turn out as poorly as did this one, but from what I've experienced thus far, doing such is always better than going with the ultrahype of the modern day, always.

[Louise Culmer · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is rather like an ancestor of Catherine Cookson's novels: a spirited heroine raised in grim, impoverished surroundings ( in this case a Lancashire mining village) with a brutal, abusive father, she toils at the mine, struggles to protect those weaker than herself (she takes a fallen woman under her wing), and falls for a man somewhat above her socially. Love triumphs in the end, but only after a lot of dastardly goings on, and more suffering for our heroine. The harsh conditions in the mining community are vividly described, and the story moves at a brisk pace. It is somewhat melodramatic, but Joan is a very likeable heroine, you care what happens to her, and you cannot help but be pleased when her beastly father meets a satisfactory sticky end.

[Cera · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of Burnett's earliest novels, it seemed remarkable to me in that it makes some effort to depict the lives of female miners, which I've never seen before in a novel of the period. It has a very Cinderella-like happy ending, but it felt like the character earned it, so I didn't mind. All in all, I really enjoyed this one.

[Noel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Late Victorian glurge. I adore late Victorian glurge, but I don't fool myself about it.

[Matthew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s books were serialised in adult publications, so I am uncertain how far they were intended for children. A few of her less famous books were written for adults, but due to her status as an author of children’s literature, I found That Lass O’Lowrie’s in the children’s section of a charity bookshop.

In fact the book is more of a Victorian social novel in the tradition of Elizabeth Gaskell, rather than a work intended for a juvenile audience. Burnett here returns to the Lancashire in which she was born to look at a mining community. I am from Lancashire myself, but Burnett came from Manchester, an area that was in Lancashire then, but is now part of its own county.

This was Burnett’s first serious book, and the comparison with Gaskell is appropriate. The book shares the virtues of books such as North and South or Mary Barton, but also their defects. Like Gaskell, Burnett has compassion for the struggling working-class; like Gaskell, her well-meaning intentions are undermined by her conservatism, ignorance of the underlying reasons for social problems and excessive religiosity.

The lass of the title is Joan Lowrie, a feisty miner’s daughter, who has faced abuse from her vicious father, but emerged all the stronger for it. She takes in the weak Liz, a disgraced girl who became pregnant after a dalliance with a son from a wealthy family, who abandoned her. Over the course of the book, she attracts the affections of Fergus Derrick, a mining engineer. Derrick has stirred up the ire of her father, who plans to murder Derrick.

Joan also becomes friends with Anice Barholm, the generously warm daughter of a complacent clergyman. Anice helps the poor members of the community, and assists the local curate Paul Grace to set up lessons to teach literacy to anyone who wishes to learn. These include Joan.

There is romance. There are misunderstandings. There is a murder plot. There is social commentary. There is death. There is a pit disaster. Well, what book about coal miners would be complete without a pit disaster?

Burnett’s heart is in the right place, but I fear this is not her strongest book. She cannot get over the roughness of the local miners, whom she portrays as if they are godless savages. The violence of Lowrie is seen by Burnett as essentially typical of how miners behave. She exaggerates their crude nature at every turn.

For example Anice wins the respect of many of the miners, but Burnett cannot help telling us that they give her an ‘uncouth greeting’. What on earth is an uncouth greeting anyway? Why can they not just give a normal greeting like anyone else? It is because Burnett cannot get away from her image of the miners as socially inferior.

As a result, Burnett offers no radical solutions to the poverty of the miners. She cannot see any value in social movements to better the miners. The only political miner we see in the book is something of a trouble-stirrer, who must be reconciled to his masters.

All help must come from above. It must come from Derrick, trying to persuade the mine owners to introduce extra safety precautions, which are even opposed by the miners themselves. Sadly, the idea of the working-class being opposed to their own interests seems sadly only too likely. That is why I am in post-Brexit Britain and watching poor people vote for the parties who care the least about them.

Alternatively the help must come from well-meaning social reformers such as Anise who dispense charity and aid to struggling locals. The idea that it would be better if the locals had enough money to better themselves without rich people’s charity is not one that occurs to Burnett.

No, they poor should receive goods, and be taught religion, which of course is what will civilise them, and move them away from their bestial state. Hence Joan Lowrie soon takes to reading the Bible and becoming more religious once she becomes literate. It would have been more fun if she had approached Anice and asked her about the many problematic passages in the Bible, but of course Burnett will not include that in her book.

Some of Burnett’s solutions – which are much the same as Gaskell’s – seem very limited to us today, but in their defence, I should mention that Victorian society was very different. Nowadays we watch while Trump’s Republicans hold meetings where they agree to strip millions of dollars of support to poor people, and then adjourn the session with a prayer. In Victorian times, Christians were actively philanthropic and genuinely wanted to help poor members of society, even if their ideas were a little limited.

Similarly we laugh at the idea that Burnett and Gaskell promote that social problems could be solved if the struggling employees sat down and had a nice cup of tea with their employer while discussing working conditions, but this was not as preposterous an idea for a Victorian writer (though probably mistaken).

The employers were not billionaires living in absurd luxury in mansions filled with gold. They were manufacturers who were only a few rungs up the ladder from their workers. A crash in the company profits would leave them not much better off than their employees.

Burnett succeeds better in her portrayal of women in the book. Joan Lowrie is a great character. She stands up firmly for Liz, when Liz is under attack from the locals. She tries to prevent Derrick from being murdered by her father. She seeks to better herself through reading, and to help others. When the mining disaster occurs, she joins the rescue team. Her personality is so strong that Derrick, Anise and Paul Grace simply cannot stop thinking about her, and they always want to know what she is doing.

Anise Barholm is another strong female character in the book. Gentle and mild in her manners, she nonetheless makes a deep impression on her local community, acting as a positive force for good, and robustly standing up for people’s rights. Even the obstreperous Sammy Craddock is not beyond her charity.

The only misstep here is the character of Liz. Like all Victorian writers, Burnett cannot get beyond the notion that a fallen woman is somehow permanently soiled. Burnett allows Joan to defend her, and she does not think that Liz should spend every minute of every day feeling guilty for her misdemeanour (in contrast to Gaskell’s Ruth).

Nonetheless if Liz does not feel bad enough about her fall from grace, this must mean that she is a weak, light and frivolous girl who will only slide into error again one day, and come to a bad end.

Now if Burnett could have made Joan the woman who became pregnant and was abandoned by a rich man, while keeping her admirable characteristics, then that would have been a much more exciting plot development. However I am not sure that the Victorians were ready for changing their narrow-minded views on women, and the book would not have been published if Burnett had tried that idea.

Overall this is a readable and interesting early work by Burnett, but it is easy to see why Burnett did not continue to write books in this manner. She found subtler ways of adding social messages to her more famous works.

[Linda · Rating 5 out of 5]

That Lass O’Lowries by Frances Hodgsone Burnett. Originally serialized in Scribner’s Monthly, this was Burnett’s first published novel (1877). It’s the story of a Lancashire "pit-girl" and the novel explores issues of social inequality and injustice. It is obvious to the reader how most of the threads of the interwoven lives of the characters will mesh in the end. So no suprises but an interesting read in terms of the era and dialect. At least I knew “graidely” from The Secret Garden. But even here I was reminded of our current political situation with this comment early in the book: “It is easier to bear one’s own misfortunes, than to bear the good fortune of better-used people.” I’ve now read The Shuttle, Robin and The Head of the House of Coombe, The Secret Garden, The Little Princess, Little Lord Fauntleroy, T. Tembaron, A Lady of Quality and The Making of a Marchioness. Hard to stumble upon this old titles in second hand book stores anymore.

[Ginny · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've wanted to read some of the adult novels by the author of the children's classics, The Secret Garden and Little Lord Fauntleroy, for a long time. That Lass O'Lowrie's was the first novel published by Frances Hodgson Burnett, in 1878. In his 1997 introduction to the book, Dennis Butts points out that Burnett's adult novels deserve greater recognition and "often give pictures of strong, independent-minded women struggling in difficult sexual and economic situations." This is certainly true of this story set in a Lancashire mining town concerning friendships and other relationships between both women and men from different walks of life. It would be an excellent addition to a reading list for a course on the history of feminist literature. I hope some colleges have already discovered this.

[Patrizia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Che cosa non si fa, pur di leggere un bel libro in lingua originale! Si recuperano copie antiche, si scaricano su Kindle riproduzioni quasi illeggibili... oppure, come in questo caso, ci si rompe la testa a capire dialoghi scritti nel dialetto del Lancashire. Ma davvero ne è valsa la pena: è un ritratto a tinte forti di una società che lascia poco spazio alle donne, scritto da una donna che, quando occorre, sa anche usare l'ironia. Avevo letto, di Patricia Gaffney, "Forever and Ever", ambientato in miniera (in Cornovaglia), a ruoli rovesciati: ma tutta la spregiudicatezza di una scrittrice moderna non riesce a rendere un decimo della tensione passionale che si crea tra i due protagonisti di questa bella storia vittoriana.

[Kat · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really loved this book, although it really was vastly different from FHB's usual style and tropes. The main romance is but one of many interweaving plot threads, featuring a wide variety of characters, and fully illustrating the small mining town setting.

The multiple accents are perfectly captured by the reader of this audiobook, in addition to giving each character a distinctive voice.

[Brooke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ultimately to my surprise, I enjoyed this novel quite a lot. At first I was annoyed by its difficult dialect and in-your-face religion, but the surprisingly strong and complex female characters really won me over. The ending was too abrupt and there was a TON of eye-rolling melodrama, but overall pretty good.

[Michele · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lovely little book and one which it has taken me far too many years to get around to reading. My daughters have loved it for years. even from the time we lived in Lancashire ourselves.
Having not lived there for 14 years the dialect was a bit of a challenge but the lovely tale repaid the effort.

[Beka · Rating 3 out of 5]

Though I didn't enjoy it as much as her children's literature, this was a nice story.

[Samantha Glasser]

Read this book for free through Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/25725/...

[Kay Robart · Rating 3 out of 5]

See my review here:

http://whatmeread.wordpress.com/2016/...

[LauraT · Rating 3 out of 5]

Burnett is always a guarantee

[Elena Micheli · Rating 3 out of 5]

Carino

[Sammy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love The Secret Garden and A Little Princess, so when I found out that Frances Hodgson Burnett's first book was set in Lancashire and featured a working class female protagonist, you can imagine how quickly I was on Project Gutenberg looking for it :D

This was a lovely tale, a sort of bildungsroman featuring five young people whose lives come together in a Lancashire coal mining town. The main character Joan Lowrie, a young pit woman already hardened by life, takes in the naive Liz, who the rest of the town rejects after she is abandoned with child. Into their lives come Anice, a Methodist Pastor's daughter / basically walking angel; Paul Grace, the reticent young curate who loves her; and Fergus Derrick, a young engineer with radical ideas about things like preventing mine explosions, that put him at odds with both the miners and the mine's owners.

Of course a little romance is involved too, but I enjoyed that the romance wasn't the main focus and, unusually for a Victorian novel, the female protagonist was allowed to have other priorities. FHB predates Disney by about 50 years but you get the feeling she would have rolled her eyes at most of it. FHB's women don't need no rescuing.

I agree with other reviewers that the sections in dialect were a bit heavy, further to which they didn't always make sense. For example 'mind' was spelt 'moind', and find 'foind', which I can't tally in my mind (moind) with any Lancashire pronunciation (we're not Cornish). But FHB was born and raised in Lancashire, so who knows!

[Pamela Butler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another of Frances Hodgson Burnett's early novels but not the earliest at 1877. I recently wrote reviews of her slightly earlier books, the short novels Pretty Polly Pemberton and Kathleen Mavourneen which, although published in book form a tad later I believe were written earlier than this novel. Like those novels this one deals with class issues although is notable in that class lines are ultimately crossed, unlike virtually any of her other stories I can think of.

The dialect was well done but I have to admit I got mired in it and found it cumbersome. Strong, interesting female protagonist - one of a group of women working in a mine which I confess I have never really heard of before but certainly had the ring of reality to it in the reading. Plot line gets a tad complicated and there was a moment where my scorecard of who was in love with whom failed me.

For all of this an excellent read and while there are a few others I rate a bit higher from somewhat later in her career I wouldn't have wanted to miss this one. I have written about the female characters in her adult novels on my blog at: https://pams-pictorama.com/2019/08/04... and reviewed a number of her other adult novels and those reviews can be found by searching Pams-Pictorama.com. Enjoy!

[Kalina · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book as it’s an unusual romance- it reads a little more like a coming of age story for Joan along with growth and character development for the three other young people. There are also some very cleverly written lines and observations sprinkled throughout. The dialogue of the Riggans characters takes some getting use to, but I found reading it aloud for a few chapters to be helpful for figuring out what they were meant to be saying

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read as a teenager (got a copy from my grandparents, I believe). Yes, Frances Hodgson Burnett wrote adult novels too. Interesting characters, but I do remember struggling a bit with the dialect. Joan is a young woman who works as a pit miner and works hard to better her situation. I remember really rooting for her, and hating her abusive father.

[Kari · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hey, reading this book makes me seem capable of speaking Lancashire!

This is like the center book of all of those British books you read from the one time period, combining Silas Marner, various Dickens books, Shirley, North and South, and probably others. This one has all that dialect though, so maybe it's more awesome.

[Carfig · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Pygmalion of the North, set in mining country. The lass is Joan, smarter than the other pit-girls, stronger as well. Fergus Derrick is the pit boss, his friend Paul Grace is the curate in love with the reverend's daughter Anice. It's not a love triangle, but Paul fears it is. Add to this Joan's fiery father who only knows how to break rules--and heads

[Creolecat]

The Flame of Life (1923)

[AFMasten · Rating 4 out of 5]

Frances Hodgson Burnett's first book, which was inspired by her childhood memories of seeing pit girls in Manchester. At first it was hard to read the northern accent, but soon I recognized what words the abbreviations and spellings represented. Although a different industry, it reminded me at times of Gaskell's North and South. Hodgson Burnett's book is a close look at a mining district and the lives of those working there, and a romance.