Doctor Cupid: A Novel

Rhoda Broughton brings her notorious wit to this sparkling tale of two sisters navigating the treacherous waters of love and society in Victorian England. Peggy Lambton approaches romance with the cool deliberation of a philosopher, while her younger sister Prue burns with the desperate hope of the truly young. They inhabit a modest home in the shadow of the great estate, watching the world above them with a mixture of longing and disdain. When a handsome stranger arrives in the neighborhood, the sisters' contrasting philosophies collide, setting off a comic chain of misadventures that tests their sisterhood and their hearts. Broughton's satirical eye spares no one: the pretensions of the upper classes, the absurdity of courtship rituals, the cruel economics of marriage all come under her keen blade. Yet beneath the comedy lies something tender: a portrait of two women trying to find their place in a world that measures a woman's worth only by the ring on her finger. For readers who prefer their humor sharp and their romances complicated.