検索キーワード： ナレーター "Georgina Sutton" すべてのカテゴリー

Inspired by a 1920s book on relationships by the bewitching Mrs Natalia Tempest, she sets her heart on opening an old-fashioned marriage bureau and bringing together lost souls just like herself.

My name is Katherine Parr. I’m thirty-one years old – already twice widowed. I love a man I can’t have. I’m to wed a man no one would want. He has cast aside two wives and watched another die in childbirth. Two more have had their heads struck from their bodies, on his order. What will become of me as Henry VIII’s sixth wife? I will have the king’s ear. With that comes power. But power means danger in the Tudor court.

Hester (1883) is a dramatic story of female power and family tensions within Victorian society. Using her own money, Catherine Vernon manages to save the family bank from collapse after her cousin John absconds with some of its money. As the matriarch of Redborough, Catherine is used to commanding authority, but this is challenged with the arrival of John’s strong and capable teenage daughter, Hester. Ignorant of her father’s conduct, Hester takes against Catherine and a mutual antipathy soon sets in. A masterpiece of domestic realism, the novel is one of Mrs Oliphant’s most admired works.