Miranda. By M. E. Braddon. (Hutchinson and Co. 6s.)- —In
the year 1862 Miss Braddon produced "Lady Audley's. Secret," a book whose popular appeal may be gauged by the fact that in London now it is being used as a cinematograph- film ; since then she has written upwards of seventy novels. In spite of these tremendous labours her new book shows no- trace of weariness; leisurely it is, of course, with the leisure of those days when motors were unknown, but it is full of interest and of careful writing. Miranda herself is a strange mingling of the products of this century and the last; she is- a precocious young lady, with an education of most modem breadth. At fifteen she reads Newman's Apologia; before. that she is plunged deep into Darwinism and the work of Spencer; yet an allusion to the children whom she may bear- in years to come strikes her as "indelicate," and when, as w grown woman, she listens to a man's account of his somewhat outspoken literary work, her whole world shakes in horror, She "slums," moreover, in the most unscientific manner possible, and regulates her mind strictly _by the standard of what is " nice " fur a woman, apparently confining her reading- in later life to the classics. - Yet Miss Braddon can never be dull or =discerning, and we thin- almost with -veil& ter e•
Previous page
