An Englishman: the Romance of a Shop. By Mary L.
rendered. New edition revised. (Mills and Boon. 6s.)—Messrs. Mills and Boon are making the experiment of republishing this novel, which appeared in 1899, in the belief that it will be more successful with the public of to-day than it was before. The following review of the book appeared in the Spectator on October 28th, 1899, and in spite of its having been revised by the author a second reading of it suggests no alteration in the terms of the review. "Miss Tendered, with great courage, makes the hero of An Englishman not merely a Briton but a grocer. The heroine, Malts Level, is a young lady accustomed to moving in the most exalted society, but driven by money troubles to fend for herself, she declines to become a pensioner on the bounty of a rich married sister, and resolves to go out as a governess. She accordingly accepts a situation in a country town to be governess-companion to a girl named Rolf, but finds that the Mr. Rolf who wrote to her and who confessed to being `business people' is brother, not father, to the girl, and that the `business' is a grocer's shop. How Maia (to paraphrase Mr. Wells) found `under the grocer—the man,' and gradually came to think the society of the commercial middle-class quite as agreeable as that of any other, it is the aim of the writer to
explain, and the result is eminently readable. But a lurking suspicion remains in the mind of the reader that the growth of Mafia's love for the gentle grocer was at least as much due to his magnificent exterior as to the solid, though not brilliant, qualities which adorn his head and heart?'
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