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dangermousieYes, I continue upon the theme of obscure books.
Has anyone on my flist heard of Ethel M. Dell? Dell was a British writer at the turn of the twentieth century, both popular and prolific. She is almost forgotten today, though, and even if in all honestly I cannot say that is unjust, I do enjoy her novels in small doses.
Dell specialized in romantic novels (I think the term ‘romance’ was used in somewhat a different sense back then, more for a swashbuckler type novel than something you’d find in a romance novel section today, so I would like to refer to her books as 'romantic' instead) in which various largely upper-class English heroines, either jittery and over-modern or hurt by life (or both) ended up thriving under the love of silently heroic men who often appeared less than exotic at first glance. And who can say no to that? Not me…
The books are rather dated in their attitude to gender roles or human roles, for that matter, but in a way that is what gives them a quaint charm, like a window into another time.
Dell’s most famous book, which I think is still in print, is The Way of an Eagle, an adventure-romance set in India. Our heroine, unpropitiously (at least to our modern ears) named Muriel, is the sole child of a Brigadier stationed in an Indian fort. When the ‘natives’, who have the uncomprehensible gall to object to the British running their country, attack and wipe out the fort, Muriel is the sole survivor. Or…almost. Before his death, her father chose Nick, one of the officers under his command, to do him the favor of getting away and saving his daughter from certain death. So Nick and Muriel embark on a dangerous journey across hostile territory blah blah blah. It’s a pretty fun novel, with a deliciously Victorian approach to sexiness (Muriel’s strange ‘repulsion’ towards Nick (who is more patient with her than I would be) is clearly an indication of both her total physical attraction to him, and her Victorian inability to process this as such right away), adventure, hurt-comfort etc etc. The secondary plot, about a female friend of Nick’s who is married to a devoted but unloved husband and is secretly in love with her cousin, is incredibly dated (short summary: divorce=bad), but ehh, it can’t all be awesome.
A typical example of her plots is The Black Knight (I think that is the name) about a dishonored upper-class woman who is disinterested in the courtship of her mild-mannered neighbour. If only he were more like the man who risked his life rescuing her when she threw herself under a train in a moment of despair at her dishonor! Surprise, surprise…he actually is! I find that novel satisfies all my junkie cravings.
My favorite of hers is actually Charles Rex, which reminds me more than a bit of Heyer’s These Old Shades. The hero of the novel, a cynical and disillusioned upper-class British gentleman, comes across a desperate young woman pretending to be a man, and hires ‘him’ as a servant. The (always delicious to me) story goes from there. Just as in Heyer, btw, he has an old flame who married another; heroine runs away from hero to protect him, and a host of other similarities, Love blossoms, angst happens, blah blah. It’s totally awesome.
The prose is deliciously old-fashioned and full of angst. See unspoilery sample of Hero and his First Love talking about Hero’s OTP:
Charlie, you love her, don't you? You--you want her back?"
He shifted his position slightly so that the smoke of his cigarette did
not float in her direction. His smile had a whimsical twist. "Do I want
her back?" he said. "On my oath, it's hard to tell."
"Oh, surely!" Maud said. She rose impulsively and stood beside him.
"Charlie," she said, "why do you wear a mask with me? Do you think I
don't know that she is all the world to you?"
He looked at her, and the twisted smile went from his face. "There is
no woman on this earth that I can't do without," he said. "I learnt
that--when I lost you."
"Ah!" Maud's voice was very pitiful. Her hand came to his. "But
this--this is different. Why should you do without her? You know she
loves you?"
His fingers closed spring-like about her own. A certain hardness was in
his look. "If she loves me," he said, "she can come back to me of her own accord."
"But if she is afraid?" Maud pleaded.
"She has no reason to be," he said. "I have claimed nothing from her. I
have never spoken a harsh word to her. Why is she afraid?"
Anyway, the reason I remembered her is because I am currently reading yet another of her novels, The Obstacle Race. The upper-class heroine of the novel, nicknamed Juliet (we have yet to learn her real name), gets sick and tired of London society for reasons I have yet to find out. She decides to spend time in a remote English village, and it is there she comes across the hero, named, a little amusingly for my modern ears, Dick Green. Their first meeting is quite dramatic: he rescues her from falling over a cliff to her death, which is just how meet-cutes should go. Dick, unlike Juliet, is decidedly not upper-class (though educated). Moreover, he has a seriously and deliciously angsty background. His mother was an upper-class lady who married much beneath herself and the man turned out to be a horrific, abusive brute who basically beat and mistreated her in front of her helpless child. Not only that, but he got her pregnant again, with twins, and spent the night she gave birth to them and died, drinking himself stupid in some tavern and refusing to come home. So she basically delivered the children and died with nobody but her twelve-year-old son by her side. To make a happy childhood even better, the lovely father died too (falling off a cliff in his drunkeness) and the boy was not only saddled with infants, but one of them turned out useless and got the other one so injured the boy ended up crippled and retarded. Yay. Or not, since Dick had to give up his law studies to take care of his damaged brother. Anyway after all that, perhaps unsurprisingly, our hero isn’t prone to emotional demonstrativeness and giddy displays of joy. However, he is yummily competent and quite manly and very reservedly emo, so I approve…
Most of her work (or all, for all I know) is so old that it exited copyright, and you can find a whole bunch of her novels at gutenberg.org
Has anyone on my flist heard of Ethel M. Dell? Dell was a British writer at the turn of the twentieth century, both popular and prolific. She is almost forgotten today, though, and even if in all honestly I cannot say that is unjust, I do enjoy her novels in small doses.
Dell specialized in romantic novels (I think the term ‘romance’ was used in somewhat a different sense back then, more for a swashbuckler type novel than something you’d find in a romance novel section today, so I would like to refer to her books as 'romantic' instead) in which various largely upper-class English heroines, either jittery and over-modern or hurt by life (or both) ended up thriving under the love of silently heroic men who often appeared less than exotic at first glance. And who can say no to that? Not me…
The books are rather dated in their attitude to gender roles or human roles, for that matter, but in a way that is what gives them a quaint charm, like a window into another time.
Dell’s most famous book, which I think is still in print, is The Way of an Eagle, an adventure-romance set in India. Our heroine, unpropitiously (at least to our modern ears) named Muriel, is the sole child of a Brigadier stationed in an Indian fort. When the ‘natives’, who have the uncomprehensible gall to object to the British running their country, attack and wipe out the fort, Muriel is the sole survivor. Or…almost. Before his death, her father chose Nick, one of the officers under his command, to do him the favor of getting away and saving his daughter from certain death. So Nick and Muriel embark on a dangerous journey across hostile territory blah blah blah. It’s a pretty fun novel, with a deliciously Victorian approach to sexiness (Muriel’s strange ‘repulsion’ towards Nick (who is more patient with her than I would be) is clearly an indication of both her total physical attraction to him, and her Victorian inability to process this as such right away), adventure, hurt-comfort etc etc. The secondary plot, about a female friend of Nick’s who is married to a devoted but unloved husband and is secretly in love with her cousin, is incredibly dated (short summary: divorce=bad), but ehh, it can’t all be awesome.
A typical example of her plots is The Black Knight (I think that is the name) about a dishonored upper-class woman who is disinterested in the courtship of her mild-mannered neighbour. If only he were more like the man who risked his life rescuing her when she threw herself under a train in a moment of despair at her dishonor! Surprise, surprise…he actually is! I find that novel satisfies all my junkie cravings.
My favorite of hers is actually Charles Rex, which reminds me more than a bit of Heyer’s These Old Shades. The hero of the novel, a cynical and disillusioned upper-class British gentleman, comes across a desperate young woman pretending to be a man, and hires ‘him’ as a servant. The (always delicious to me) story goes from there. Just as in Heyer, btw, he has an old flame who married another; heroine runs away from hero to protect him, and a host of other similarities, Love blossoms, angst happens, blah blah. It’s totally awesome.
The prose is deliciously old-fashioned and full of angst. See unspoilery sample of Hero and his First Love talking about Hero’s OTP:
Charlie, you love her, don't you? You--you want her back?"
He shifted his position slightly so that the smoke of his cigarette did
not float in her direction. His smile had a whimsical twist. "Do I want
her back?" he said. "On my oath, it's hard to tell."
"Oh, surely!" Maud said. She rose impulsively and stood beside him.
"Charlie," she said, "why do you wear a mask with me? Do you think I
don't know that she is all the world to you?"
He looked at her, and the twisted smile went from his face. "There is
no woman on this earth that I can't do without," he said. "I learnt
that--when I lost you."
"Ah!" Maud's voice was very pitiful. Her hand came to his. "But
this--this is different. Why should you do without her? You know she
loves you?"
His fingers closed spring-like about her own. A certain hardness was in
his look. "If she loves me," he said, "she can come back to me of her own accord."
"But if she is afraid?" Maud pleaded.
"She has no reason to be," he said. "I have claimed nothing from her. I
have never spoken a harsh word to her. Why is she afraid?"
Anyway, the reason I remembered her is because I am currently reading yet another of her novels, The Obstacle Race. The upper-class heroine of the novel, nicknamed Juliet (we have yet to learn her real name), gets sick and tired of London society for reasons I have yet to find out. She decides to spend time in a remote English village, and it is there she comes across the hero, named, a little amusingly for my modern ears, Dick Green. Their first meeting is quite dramatic: he rescues her from falling over a cliff to her death, which is just how meet-cutes should go. Dick, unlike Juliet, is decidedly not upper-class (though educated). Moreover, he has a seriously and deliciously angsty background. His mother was an upper-class lady who married much beneath herself and the man turned out to be a horrific, abusive brute who basically beat and mistreated her in front of her helpless child. Not only that, but he got her pregnant again, with twins, and spent the night she gave birth to them and died, drinking himself stupid in some tavern and refusing to come home. So she basically delivered the children and died with nobody but her twelve-year-old son by her side. To make a happy childhood even better, the lovely father died too (falling off a cliff in his drunkeness) and the boy was not only saddled with infants, but one of them turned out useless and got the other one so injured the boy ended up crippled and retarded. Yay. Or not, since Dick had to give up his law studies to take care of his damaged brother. Anyway after all that, perhaps unsurprisingly, our hero isn’t prone to emotional demonstrativeness and giddy displays of joy. However, he is yummily competent and quite manly and very reservedly emo, so I approve…
Most of her work (or all, for all I know) is so old that it exited copyright, and you can find a whole bunch of her novels at gutenberg.org
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