![]() The Prince of Wales went on to organize an ‘East Lynne’ evening, and one of the company, Arthur Penryn Stanley, Professor of Ecclesiastic History at Oxford, later boasted, ‘I came off with flying colours, and put one question which no one could answer - with whom did Lady Isabel dine on the fatal night?’ 1 The ‘fatal night’ in question is when Isabel, the novel’s erring heroine, runs away from her respectable bourgeois husband to join a dissipated aristocrat. ![]() The young man was Queen Victoria’s eldest son, Edward, and the novel was Mrs Henry Wood’s East Lynne. When his friends returned to the camp they found him still reading, and he later insisted that they read it too. ![]() In 1862 a young Englishman touring Egypt declined an invitation to join his travelling companions on an expedition to the tombs, choosing instead to finish a particularly engrossing novel. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |