“Lady Audley’s Secret,” “Mohawks,” &c.
OPINIONS OF THE PRESS.
“Everybody who cares about a novel with a good plot so well worked out that the excitement is kept up through the three volumes, and culminates with the last chapter of the story, must ‘Like’ and can never again ‘Unlike’ this the latest and certainly one of the best of Miss Braddon’s novels. Miss Braddon is our most dramatic novelist. Her method is to interest the reader at once with the very first line, just as that Master-Dramatist of our time Dion Boucicault would rivet the attention of an audience by the action at the opening of the piece, even before a line of the dialogue had been spoken. This authoress never wastes her own time and that of her reader by giving up any number of pages at the outset to a minute description of scenery, to a history of a certain family, to a wearisome account of the habits and customs of the natives, or to explaining peculiarities in manners and dialect which are to form one of the principal charms of the story. No: Miss Braddon is dramatic just as far as the drama can assist her, and then she is the genuine novelist. A few touches present her characters living before the reader, and the story easily develops itself in, apparently, the most natural manner possible. ‘Like and Unlike’ will make many people late for dinner, and will keep a number of persons up at night when they ought to be soundly sleeping. These are two sure tests of a really well-told sensational novel. Vive Miss Braddon!”—Punch, October 15th, 1887.
“The author of ‘Lady Audley’s Secret’ still keeps her place among the most thrilling and fascinating writers of sensational fiction. Her new novel, ‘Like and Unlike,’ has the best qualities of her best work. The style is as clear and nervous as ever, the plot constructed and developed with the same admirable skill, the interest as intense, and the effect on the imagination as powerful. There is at the same time more evident in this than in some former works of Miss Braddon’s a higher purpose than merely to amuse and thrill the reader. The dramatic element is strong in this tale, but it is the story that speaks; the author never for a moment stops in her narrative to offer a word of comment or enforce its moral. None the less powerfully does it preach the vanity of vanities of the selfish pursuit of pleasure, the misery that is the end of heartlessness, the retribution that follows sins great and small, and also the omnipotence in noble natures of penitence and love. It would not be fair to the reader to take away from that ignorance of the future which is necessary to the keenest enjoyment of Miss Braddon’s stories. ‘Like and Unlike’ deals with both country and town life. There are pure and noble characters in it, and others light and vain and vicious, and the currents of life of the two classes are intermingled beneficently and tragically. The title has reference to the twin brothers, who play a leading—one of them the leading—part in the drama. Their characters are admirably ‘delineated and contrasted,’ and the moral significance of Valentine’s career is as great as its interest is absorbing. Madge is also a powerful creation. The Deverill girls and the other society characters are vividly portrayed. The story begins quietly, and for a time the reader believes that Miss Braddon is for once not going to be sensational. He finds by and by that this is a mistake, and is intensely interested by the gradual, natural, and apparently inevitable way in which, out of very ordinary materials, the structure of a powerful plot rises. This will rank among the best of Miss Braddon’s novels.”—Scotsman, October 3, 1887.
⁂ When announcing a recent Novel (“Phantom Fortune”), Messrs. Tillotson & Son published the following statement in their great coterie of newspapers:
“In announcing the issue of another story from the pen of this gifted author, it seems scarcely necessary to write anything like an elaborate notice of her previous successes on the field of light literature. It is now many years ago since ‘Lady Audley’s Secret’ brought Miss Braddon the fame which lasts all time; and numerous as have been the stories produced by her facile pen since then, her genius has lost none of its brilliance nor her skill its cunning. Years have not weakened her marvellous powers of imagination, nor familiarity with her productions diminished the sparkling freshness of her infinite variety. Her later works, as competent critics readily aver, exhibit higher and better qualities than her earlier, because bringing to bear long experience, a ripened understanding, and a mature judgment upon her brilliant genius, her unrivalled skill in the construction of plots, and her marvellous talent for depicting human nature under incessant changes of character and circumstances.
“A glance at the earlier chapters of the story upon which Miss Braddon is now engaged (‘Phantom Fortune’), and which we shall shortly place before our readers, abundantly justifies language of the loftiest eulogy. Almost at its very opening we are introduced to characters and scenes of absorbing interest. Around distinguished personages in the political and diplomatic world gather lords and ladies of the highest rank of beauty and fashion. Indian affairs and Indian princes figure conspicuously. The Cabinet at home and the India Office are in a flutter of excitement consequent upon extraordinary rumours affecting an Anglo-Indian official of high rank, who suddenly returns to England, another Warren Hastings, to defend himself before the Imperial Parliament, but mysteriously dies on his arrival in this country, after painful interviews with his accomplished wife, a person of exalted rank and station. With a skill all Miss Braddon’s own, she portrays not the outer and conventional ways of Society only, but also the inner life of the lords and ladies who constitute the leading characters, drawn by her masterly hand. As the story proceeds it may be expected to develop one of the strongest of Miss Braddon’s strong plots, and to maintain her almost boundless sway in the domain of fiction.”