When I finished Volume One of A Modern Incident, I was half-way through the novel and I still had absolutely no idea what was going on. No idea. So far we just had:
    Page after page of characters stammering out incoherent remarks (dashes and dots in the original):

• “Thy looks! –I feel them, --they will d---n me yet!”)
• “I cannot pray! –I will not—no—Hell is but reprobation—that is mine already—or will be soon --- ---- ---- --- --- Yet, --but him [Mr. Winstanley, that is] I now hate—I know him,--he knows not me,---no, nor my deeds.—One effort yet, to cool this burning fever, to ease this secret torture, --this---this—Oh, Mortimore! –Mortimore!—Thee!—this—and if I fail! –be they blasted in all hope, --and I!—dark perdition cover me for ever—ever--!”
• “Why Mrs. Courtney uttered such a frantic shriek, or what caused such violent emotion, the reader is left to imagine…”

    Page after page of characters harboring a secret:

• “the secrets of another are not my own.”
• "I have already told you... that I never mean to marry."

    And characters turning pale and rushing from the room:

• "With these incoherent and inexplicable words, he rushed with frantic impetuousity from their presence.”

    Perhaps a gothic novel aficionado would be familiar with the tropes and plot devices that baffled me and would figure out the Big Secret before it was revealed in the penultimate chapter, but I only persisted with the book because it was a quick read; a two-volume novel which had not been reviewed when it came out.
    And holy snapping turtles, this had some lurid stuff; at least, lurid compared to the decorous voice of Jane Austen. This has several same-sex teases, and an incest tease, and a ghost-who-turns-out-to-be not a ghost, adultery and seduction, along with forged letters and other skullduggery. Get your smelling salts out for this one.

     Welcome to the New Year, a time for clean slates. Virgin and unspoiled, as it were. I didn't plan this, but it looks like January will be devoted to novels that obsess on the theme of Female Chastity and Female Reputation, or as they called it, "Fame." In all of January's novels, the big page-turning question is: can the heroine preserve her virtue and/or will the heroine be able to clear her name after her virtue has been impugned? Reading a succession of these novels really brings home the emphasis put on female virtue in the society of the time. And of course, not only the Georgian/Regency era but before and after, up to the sexual revolution of the 1960's. Some novels, like this one, take up the question of illegitimacy as well.
    In my study of 18th-century novels, I don’t usually read Gothic novels because (1) they currently receive plenty of attention in academic circles and (2) I’m studying Jane Austen in the context of the conventions and tropes of the sentimental novel, not the gothic. But Glenmore Abbey popped up in my search results twice for containing some phrases which Austen satirically used. Remember how Mrs. Elton kept boasting about her “resources,” which would keep her occupied and entertained in the small village of Highbury? The same term appears in Glenmore Abbey. And twice, characters are offered the “balm of consolation” poured into “wounded bosoms,” à la Mary Bennet in Pride and Prejudice. Finally, Glenmore Abbey never received a review when it was published, and I like giving attention to such long-ignored books.
      But I'm not going to denigrate Mrs. Isaacs for writing with trite clichés, although she certainly does at times: “To do justice to the ruined towers of Glenmore, the pen of ancient romance should delineate the thick clustering turrets, the broken columns, the fallen pillars, and mouldering battlements, that frowned over the gloomy domain. It was extensive and had once been well cultivated, but neglect had rendered it a barren waste, and the high trees, around many of which the climbing ivy had entwined itself, were merely a resort for the seafowl and birds of prey… (etc.)”
     Let’s be fair, she’s probably writing for money, and she’s writing to a specific formula, in emulation of the very successful Anne Radcliffe—in other words she is ticking the boxes with a tale that includes mystery, suspense, a touch of the supernatural, and moral lessons... 

​    A Summer at Weymouth is a novel written in imitation of the immensely popular A Winter in London by Thomas Skinner Surr (1806), which I reviewed here. The novel touches on many of the preoccupations of the day, but first we have to talk about the fact that a love-rival for the heroine is biracial and nobody has an issue with this. “[A]lthough his dark complexion discovered him to be on one side the son of an Indian, the regular beauty of his features, the sensible expression of his fine dark eyes, and the symmetry of his graceful form adorned by the most polished manners rendered him the admiration of all who beheld him.” He is “skilled in the Persian, Arabian, and Indostan music, and sung the songs of those languages with great expression.”  He also dances divinely. Our main heroine, Stella Fitzalbion, knew him from boyhood and has a crush on him.
     George is the adopted ward of the Earl of Charlewood and was raised along with the Earl’s own children. He returned to India at 18 to fill a "lucrative and honorable post" and acquired a “considerable fortune.” He “knows only that [his parents] died when he was an infant, but has never heard who they were.”
    Hmmm… a man of color, of unknown parentage, accepted into society? What is the answer to the mystery which clings about him?
     ​    ​Young George happens to meet Mr. Russell, an older merchant returned from India, who is struck by George’s strong resemblance to the Rajah Abdalla. Mr. Russell goes on to mention that many years ago, a fire broke out at the Rajah’s palace, and the women of the palace, “all ran out terrified, wives and children, among a regiment of European soldiers” who had come to help fight the fire.
    Mr. Russell goes on to add that months later, Abdallah mourned “the death of a favourite daughter, [the Princess Roseatenissa] who was to have married his brother’s son; which marriage had been delayed on account of her ill health, occasioned by her extreme terror on the morning of the fire. That young lady was, they said, a perfect beauty, and very accomplished…”

   Austen scholars know that Jane Austen was familiar with the 1806 novel Lady Maclairn, the victim of villany (It’s spelled ‘villany’ on the title-page), because her niece Anna recalled how she and her aunt had a good laugh over its emotional excesses. There also exists a short satirical note that Austen wrote to Anna about it.
    I wonder if Austen managed to plow through all four volumes and 700 pages. I confess to skimming and skipping the last half, when the author was gearing up to introduce a whole new raft of characters and more subplots and backstories. Austen scholar Deirdre LeFaye counted ‘a total of nearly twenty flashbacks in all,’ and I don’t know if that includes the long narrative summary which commences the novel. However, even though I didn’t manage to read Lady Maclairn cover to cover, this forgotten novel deserves another look for a number of reasons: the attitude displayed in the book toward the slave trade, the Big Family Secret storyline, the naturalistic portrayal of insanity, and the harsh portrait of a clergyman.
    It appears that Lady Maclairn did not receive a review when first published. So here goes:
    Mrs. Dawson, a wealthy widow, never forgave her son-in-law for taking her daughter away to Jamaica, where she died far from home after giving birth to little Rachel Cowley, our heroine. Mrs. Dawson’s will leaves her fortune to Rachel, but Rachel will only inherit if the father returns her to England to be raised by Mrs. Dawson's respectable friends, the Hardcastles. It is just as well for Rachel, because she is growing spoiled in Jamaica where she can lord it over the enslaved people. Her character improves in England where she grows up with gentle little Lucy Hardcastle and her older brother Horace. Rachel looks up to him and she grows into ‘’the habit of yielding up her will to Horace.’’
   ‘’The tribute of Horace’s admiration was directed to the cultivating the taste and forming the judgment of'' our heroine....’’