Tuesday 1 June 2010

Summer will show (Townsend Warner)

Summer will show is an extremely interesting novel that falls into two parts. It centres around the character of Sophia Willoughby, a young aristocratic woman. In the first part we are introduced to Sophia, the young aristocratic woman around whom the novel centres. Controversially for the 1840s, she has an unusual degree of freedom, having inherited land from her family. Consequently, when her husband has an affair, she sends him away to France to live with his mistress. Her life changes when both of her young children die of smallpox. She follows her husband to France. She arrives in the Spring of 1848, just as France is about to undergo revolution, and becomes both trapped by it and caught up in it, and embarks on a relationship with her husband's mistress.

It's been published just one in a VMC edition with this fantastic cover that has a very revolutionary feel.

(PS: I hope Summer will show around here sometime soon - the weather has reverted to its normal grey chilly dismallness and I want to get my flipflops out again)

1 comment:

  1. Sounds very interesting - and like a cross between Mary Woolstonecraft and Gwen John (biography wise rather than literary output wise that is!)

    Agree with you about the weather - it has been tipping it down here and even the cat doesn't want to go outside!

    thanks for sharing
    hannah

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