Harriet (Valancourt 20th Century Classics)
Elizabeth Jenkins
Language: English
Pages: 198
ISBN: 1941147712
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Harriet Ogilvy is a young woman with a small fortune and a mental disability, making her the ideal target for the handsome and scheming Lewis Oman. After winning Harriet's love, Lewis, with the help of his brother and mistress, sets in motion a plan of unspeakable cruelty and evil to get his hands on her money. With consummate artistry, Elizabeth Jenkins transforms the bare facts of this case from the annals of Victorian England's Old Bailey into an absolutely spine-chilling exploration of the depths of human depravity.
Based on the real-life 1877 case of Harriet Staunton, Harriet (1934) was a bestseller and a major critical success, beating Evelyn Waugh's A Handful of Dust to win the Prix Femina. This edition features a new afterword by Dr. Catherine Pope.
"Like a cold hand clutching at the heart." - Observer
"It is superb. Every word grips." - Manchester Evening News
"So exciting that I could hardly read it." - James Agate, Daily Express
"Everything she writes spells for me an enchantment that makes sober criticism next to impossible." Gerald Bullett, Time and Tide
child, and her whole life had been surrounded by her mother’s kindness. Nothing but a deep, primeval instinct, beyond her control as the tides are beyond the control of man, could have induced her to set herself up against her mother. Now that the cause of disagreement was shelved she went on exactly as she had always done: deriving intense enjoyment from small pleasures, outings, purchases, the playing of a musical box; and as her mother made no motion to check her in her frequent mention of
all. You ought not to bring me upstairs for nothing,” and then go down again. The nurse had been quite undeceived about Alice from the first; and had she not been of a suspicious nature, the fact that Alice, though acting as complete mistress of the house to tradespeople and the servant, never did a stroke of work herself, or even made any, enquiry after the baby, would have been enough to make her so; besides, Lewis was now so happy and open-hearted in his devotion that he could not keep his
angry with her. Sometimes she quite forgot to miss them, for Clara kept a change of clothes ready washed for her; but sometimes, particularly when she put on the same pair of boots day after day, getting now so worn and scratched and dull, she would remember the row of smart boots and slippers she had once had, and feel very lost and melancholy. One morning, however, everything seemed changed and joyful. Patrick said to Elizabeth at breakfast, “Have you told Harriet?” and Elizabeth said,
as Mrs. Lewis Oman; her mother could be hoodwinked, or persuaded to hoodwink herself, which amounted to the same thing; Alice herself was his heart and soul, and he had the strong support of the family at the Woodlands; but supposing that fact also were to be known, it would be impossible to explain it away. Lewis was not haunted by any sensation of guilt or awkward struggles of remorse; as the perfectly healthy body is one of which the owner is unaware, perhaps the perfectly healthy conscience
better of a pack of fools was unbounded. They both rehearsed the story once more, and Lewis put it forward that the chief cause of his amicable separation from Harriet had been her intemperance; Patrick amended that he had always been strictly careful to keep spirits out of her way, and that as she was deprived of them her longing seemed to decrease, and they had had every hope of her being quite cured, before she was taken ill so suddenly. “She was quite conscious when we arrived at Penge, I