Miss Syrett’s novel might be called The Making of a Modern Woman. The story begins in 1885, when Rose Cottingham, the heroine, is nine years old. It shows us Rose first as a child at war with her home environment, then her life as a school girl, and then her wider emotional and intellectual experiences when she goes out into the world and mixes in literary society. The book is not only a subtle study of a girl’s development, but is also a striking picture of the social and literary life of the late Victorian period, the period of The Savoy and The Yellow Book, of Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley, of the æsthetic and the earlier Socialist movements.
G. P. Putnam’s Sons
New York London
The Iron Stair
A Romance of Dartmoor
By
“Rita”
In this novel is told how, for the sake of a girl, in pity for her grief, in blind obedience to her entreaties, Aubrey Derrington, a possible peer of the realm, the fastidious, bored, dilettante man about town, whom his friends had known only as such, finds himself not only in love, but in as tight a corner as ever a man was placed, with the risk of criminal prosecution as an accessory after the fact. A love story, full of charm, complexity, and daring, is unfolded in the fresh gorse and heather-strewn setting of the Devonshire moors and against the dark background of frowning prison walls. A girl, an innocent convict, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, and the hero of the story are the central figures.
G. P. Putnam’s Sons
New York London