The Lightning Conductor: The Strange Adventures of a Motor-Car

The Lightning Conductor #1

by C.N. Williamson, A.M. Williamson

1903. Illustrated. The book begins: Dear Shiny-headed Angel, I hope you won't mind, but I've changed all my plans. I've bought an automobile, or a motorcar, as they call it over here; and while I'm writing to you, Aunt Mary is having nervous prostration on a sofa in a corner at least a hundred years old-I mean the sofa, not the corner, which is a good deal more. But perhaps I'd better explain. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing.

Genres: Classics, Novels, Fiction, Historical Fiction

344 pages, Hardcover

First published May 14, 1903

About the author

Charles Norris Williamson, 1859–1920, British writer and journalist

Reviews

[sydney · Rating 4 out of 5]

bro this girl is nuts!!! i love her!!!

what else is there to say!!

if you want a lighthearted romp throughout europe with the dream that is unlimited money and power, seeing beautiful things through beautiful eyes, here you go. oh how i enjoyed this.

[Carmen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Better as an Edwardian travelogue than a narrative, but that also could have been the format. Available on Project Gutenberg, I read this as part of the Literary Letters Substack (up to today, when I went ahead and finished it as I'll not have time at the weekend). I love these communal read-alongs, but I think the relatively short timespan of the novel combined with large gaps between each entry and the length of each one made it a slightly less satisfying experience than Dracula Daily. That said, I never would have read this otherwise! It was great fun, and I look forward to what Literary Letters do next.

[Catherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Last year, I did the Dracula Daily substack read. If you haven't heard of it, basically you subscribe to a substack that sends you the entirety of Bram Stoker's famous novel, 'Dracula,' in real-time according to the dates in the book.
I enjoyed that so much that, after it was finished, I decided I wanted to check out more substacks of classic epistolary novels.
That was when I found this one.
Now, I had never heard of this book and that surprised me. Usually, even if I haven't read a classic novel I've at least heard of it.
But I went into 'The Lightening Conductor,' with only a basic description of the plot and. I. LOVED. This.

This is a fantastic novel. Funny, thrilling, and with incredibly beautiful descriptions of the French and Italian countrysides that were so vivid I legitimately felt like I was there.
I really enjoyed the characters in this one and the way that they (especially Molly, the main character) were written.
Also the look at driving culture right after the car was invented, when a lot of towns in Europe didn't even have drivable roads, was fascinating.
I highly recommend this to anyone who enjoys classic novels. I promise it's not dry or boring at all and actually pretty short.
5 stars!

[Hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the second book of the Williamsons' that I read. I loved every hilarious minute. What could go wrong during a motoring trip in Europe in the early 1900s? Everything, apparently...until the right young man arrives who knows how to make a car run correctly. It is well written, witty, interesting, and romantic.

[Ruthenator · Rating 3 out of 5]

(3.5 stars, a fun read, especially if you keep google maps open to follow the journey through France and Italy, hovering over place names to see photos)
Reading this "in real time" via Literary Letters, an email subscription in which you are sent the book in accordance with each date of the letters written that make up this novel. (Actually I started late and just caught up so *now* am reading it along with the dated letters)

[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such an absolute gem of travelogue and shenanigans! Simply fun, funny, and edifying. If you only had the necessary backdrops and props, this would make a perfect play with a perfectly (& quickly) wrapped up ending. Satisfying and sweet; old-fashioned and lovely.

[Littlerhymes · Rating 2 out of 5]

American Molly Randolph is on a grand tour of Europe with her aunt when she decides to purchase one of those newfangled motor-cars. Along the way she picks up a chauffeur called Brown who is simply too dashing and knowledgeable to be real; and in fact he's not, he is an English nobleman in disguise who just wants to get closer to Molly.

Apparently this was a huge hit in the 1900s but I found it a crashing (sorry) bore most of the time. The Jack/Brown hidden identity thing should be the engine (sorry) that drives the plot and instead it feels almost incidental. I kept waiting for Molly's rapturous descriptions of Europe to end so we could get back to the story but in fact the travelogue is at least three quarters of the story.

The travelogue aspects are great if that's all you want out of it, but I'd rather have dropped all of that and had a neat novella.

[Emmy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been slowly reading this story through Substack, and I have to say, it was quite fun! While the long depictions of travels and sites sometimes wore my patience a little thin, the story itself (and the romance at the center of it all) was quite fun. I'd definitely read more by this author-duo, if only to explore more adventures of the Lightning Conductor!

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Probably more of a 2.5. Ludicrous plot but entertainingly written, witty with interesting period detail (it was written in 1903). It did however drag on for about 70 more pages than were really neccessary and towards the end it was a bit of a chore.

[Margo · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a delightful surprise this book was! The travelogue element was a bit much for my modern tastes, but the look into early car culture is fascinating. Most importantly, the voice, characters, and comedy are top-notch. A charming romcom.

[Niko · Rating 3 out of 5]

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[Nat · Rating 4 out of 5]

For a book that just describes sights on a road trip at the turn of the century, this was a cute, fun story to read. I enjoyed the characters and their dynamics, which was what kept me reading.

[Alyssa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this through Literary Letters and loved every bit of it. It was delightful.

[Maxie Froelicher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh this was so SILLY I loved it

[Alisha · Rating 2 out of 5]

This had all the elements of the normal Williamsons' book: someone is in disguise, people are taking a road-trip and waxing poetic about the sights they see, and there are a couple of sort of cartoon-y villains. But for me it somehow didn't have as much sparkle.
John Winston, a wealthy young British gentleman with an automobile, catches a couple of glimpses of Molly Randolph, an American girl who is just starting on her first-ever automobile trip, with her old maiden aunt. He falls instantly in love with her. Because she's having no end of trouble with her car and because her chauffeur is a villain, John offers himself as a chauffeur in order to get to spend more time with her. She hires him, and they proceed to drive around rural France/Spain/Italy, having various car-related mishaps along the way.
It felt like there was even more travelogue stuff in this book than in some of the others, which can make the pace pretty slow. Also, I didn't like the way that John (or "Brown" as he is called when in his chauffeur role) has to force himself to be fairly subservient to Molly and the way she talks about how it's a pity that he's a chauffeur instead of a gentleman. A hundred years ago it was considered an unchanging truth that people didn't really get to escape their social class and that you were in the circumstances in which God wanted you, and that theory pops up in many novels of the period, but in this book for some reason that viewpoint grated on my nerves a bit more.

[J. · Rating 3 out of 5]

What I enjoy about the Williamson's romance/travelogues are the tantalizing references to history and geography that I have no knowledge of. I have to read with access to google and wikipedia and continually look up names and places. I've learned a lot about European history and geography. Plus the descriptions of the necessary travel gear and comments about speeding along at twenty miles an hour are pretty funny.