The Stone Maiden

by Anne Rundle, Alexandra Manners (Pseudonym)

Unexpectedly, Maggie Steart is forced by circumstance to go and live with her father's long estranged kin in the highlands of Scotland. There, beneath the cold and austere gables of the ancestral home, Maggie finds herself drawn into the web of terror surrounding the dread and mysterious island known as The Stone Maiden

Genres: Gothic, Romance, Gothic Romance, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Mystery

303 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1973

About the author

Anne Lamb Rundle
aka Anne Rundle, Joanne Marshall, Marianne Lamont, Alexandra Manners, Jeanne Sanders, Georgianna Bell

Anne Lamb was born on 1920 in Berwick-on-Tweed, Northumberland, England, UK, daughter of Annie Sanderson and George Manners Lamb, a soldier. She was educated at Army Schools, and attended Berwick High School for Girls. She worked as civil servant on Newcastle-upon-Tyne from 1942 to 1950. On 1th October 1949, she married Edwin Charles Rundle, and had one daughter, Anne, and two sons, James and Iain.

When she published her first novel in 1967, she won the Netta Muskett Award for new writers. She won twice the Romantic Novel of the Year Award by the Romantic Novelists' Association for her novels Cat on a Broomstick (1970) and Flower of Silence (1971). In 1974, she was named Daughter of Mark Twain. On 1937, she married Richard Maddocks, who died in 1970. Anne Rundle died on 1989.

Reviews

[Mel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well written but somewhat bland and predictable gothic.

[Kendra · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book in a corner of my local library when I was in middle school - which didn't feel all that long ago until I reread it just now. Good grief, was this ever bad! I don't mind the gothic-y feel to the book because that's exactly what I loved back then. Yes, it's heavy-handed, and Maggie sees danger in every shadow. She's a Shaggy who really needs to have a Velma or Freddy around to keep her under control. But that was my whole reason for reading this kind of book, and I reveled in the scary, who-knows-what-might-happen? atmosphere.

But here's what I find unforgiveable:
The cruelty - Fran is a "cripple" whose life has been forever ruined??
The racism - Ethiopian ogress??
The strictly adhered-to hierarchy - Maggie can't be bothered to learn the name of the maid she calls "You"
The rampant sexism - men and girls, blah blah blah.
Ugh!

[William · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anne Rundle's debut novel as Alexandra Manners positions her firmly in the Victoria Holt tradition: a 19th Century gothic narrated in first person, involving the reunion with a long-lost family and the secrets that follow. What marks this tale—and Rundle/Manners' follow-up, "Candles in the Wood"—is an allowance for the supernatural: here, heroine Maggie Stewart's ability to have glimpses of the past; as well as an allusion to sexuality that was very foreign to the much-more conservative Holt. While the novel's plot is not particularly complex nor hard to deduce, the occasional creepy touches ad the flashes of adult passion make this work stand out against the legions of writers hoping to cash in on the 1970s gothic revival craze.