Violet: The Story of the Irrepressible Violet Hunt and Her Circle of Lovers and Friends--Ford Madox Ford, H.G. Wells, Somerset Maugham, and Henry Jam

by Barbara Belford

Profiles novelist Violet Hunt, a thoroughly liberated woman in Victorian England

Genres: Biography

351 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 1990

Reviews

[Linda]

Story of a personality and her friends-many prominent authors and artists of her day.

[Erin]

I jumped into this book with high hopes. I found it at a thrift shop (some of my favorite books have come from random thrift store finds) and it looked really interesting. As I started reading I was enjoying it but as the book continued it became more about name dropping her famous friends, lovers, friend's friends', lover's friends, etc. I started to lose track of everyone's name half way through the book.

I only made it three quarters of the way before I had to put it down. I stopped connecting with the work. In the beginning it was interesting, there was intrigue, scandal, liberation, feminism, but toward the end it felt like that was a facade for Violet, it was only an outward embodiment of one of her characters.

At times Violet was interesting but I was exhausted by the constant affection she showed to men two, three times her age. The constant pining for married men, it seemed very cliche for lack of a better word. Her constant need to take care of a father figure was a little disturbing after a while.

Speaking of disturbing things the amount of time the author devotes to describing a pedophile who lusted after Violet and her younger sister (aged 9 and 7 I think) was disgusting. The author portrays him in a good light and his taste for young girls a slight burden he has to bare like a big mole or limp. Strange.

I just wasn't entertained enough to read the whole book.