Irene Iddesleigh

Some books are written to be great. This one was written for a tenth wedding anniversary and became something else entirely: the most gloriously, spectacularly bad novel ever published. Amanda McKittrick Ros's 1897 romance has been called the worst book in the world by critics, scholars, and anyone who's managed to finish it. Its purple prose reaches such stratospheric heights of floridness that readers emerge breathless, uncertain whether they've witnessed a fever dream or an elaborate practical joke. The plot follows Irene, an adopted Canterbury noblewoman who captures the heart of Sir John Dunfern. They marry. Then, in a twist that defies all logic and taste, she abandons him for her own tutor and elopes. The story careens from melodrama to melodrama with zero regard for plausibility, each sentence more overwrought than the last. So why does it endure? Because sometimes the most entertaining books aren't the best ones. Irene Iddesleigh is a curiosity, a trainwreck, a document of Victorian literary ambition at its most unhinged. Read it for the irony. Read it to see exactly how bad prose can get. Read it with friends and take shots every time a character sighs dramatically.