Borderland: A Country-Town Chronicle by Fothergill, Jessie - 1887

London: Richard Bentley and Son, 1887. Borderland: A Country-Town Chronicle - 485pp + 2pg catalogue, over 500g, blind stamped decorative cloth, gilt titling on the spine, corners have wear but not too bad. Jessie Fothergill, author of The First Violin, was a novelist perhaps of the quality of Gaskell or George Eliot. Her first two novels did not sell but her third novel, The First Violin was very popular and made Fothergill's name. The story was written in Dusseldorf by Fothergill and it tells the story of an English girl who rejects the attentions of the rich farmer for the strange attractions of a German. The story was rejected by two publishers because it dealt with an affair by a married woman. The publishers thought this would not be well received but they were mistaken as considerable sales continued not only in Britain but also in the United States. The style of her novels is well summed up by Linda Gardiner in her 1892 Novel Review article: What attracted her were the problems of life, both in human beings themselves and in their relation to their environment, and very few of her leading characters can be truthfully described as amiable or genial personages. The most prominent of them are battling, as human beings are apt to do, with their own hearts and with fate, and inclined to rebellious independence and bitterness of spirit. This gives a somewhat gloomy and aggressive tone to her stories, most conspicuous, perhaps, in Healey and Borderland. But the same qualities which are answerable for this earnestness, intensity, and individuality make the reader feel that time spent over Miss Fothergill’s novels has not been misspent or given in vain, and secure for her an honourable place among the novelists of the Victorian era.. Hardcover. Good/None issued. 19cm.