Sandra Belloni — Volume 4

In the fir-wood outside Brookfield, a voice rings out at night so strangely beautiful it could be supernatural. Its owner is Emilia Sandra Belloni, half-Italian, half-English, and wholly unacceptable to the society that judges her. Born a gentleman's natural daughter and raised abroad, she exists in that uncomfortable space between classes where she belongs to neither world. She has given her heart to young Wilfrid Pole, but Wilfrid is betrothed to a woman of proper standing and immovable prospects. When Emilia's passion becomes known, Mr. Pole is thrown into agonies of paternal distress, his son leading on a woman of uncertain status while engaged to another. George Meredith, that most ironical and psychologically acute of Victorian novelists, turns his sharp eye on the comfortable certainties of English gentility and finds them wanting. The novel dissects the cruelties of class, the impossible position of women who love unwisely, and the cost of passion in a world that rewards prudence. It is for readers who want their Victorian fiction with edge, their heroines burning, and their social satire unsentimental.