The Hampstead Mystery: A Novel. Volume 1 (of 3)

In the leafy confines of Hampstead, Jenny Crampton finds herself trapped between a father's iron will and the stirring of her own heart. Frederick Walcheren, Catholic, financially precarious, and bearing the taint of disreputable habits in the eyes of Victorian society, has won her affection despite every prohibition her father can muster. When Mr. Crampton declares war on the match, Jenny faces an impossible choice: submit to paternal authority and the comfortable prison of respectable obedience, or seize her happiness through the desperate expedient of elopement. Florence Marryat, writing at the height of the sensation novel's cultural moment, constructs a heroine who refuses to be silent about her desires in a world determined to speak for her. The novel pulses with the anxiety of its era: religious prejudice, class anxiety, and the terrifyiing vulnerability of women whose economic and social existence depends entirely on male permission. Volume One lays bare the explosive domestic war that erupts when a daughter dares to choose her own destiny.