Tag: GRO0245

The following recent books are in circulation at Lyne’s Library: Terms for reading: 3d per seven days, or part thereof: … (includes) … “Children of this World” by Ellen F. Pinsent …

[see also Grantham Journal: Saturday 1^st June 1895: “Children of this World” – Helen (sic) Pinsent]

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Transcribed in whole or part from scanned originals: Presented with or without modified text and punctuation. For absolute accuracy refer to the original newspapers. Source: The British Newspaper Archive.

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GRO0245 Devonport: Ellen Frances Parker: 1866 – 1949

Reviews: Wise in their Generation: Two years or more ago Miss Pinsent gave hostages to fortune by writing a novel called “Jenny’s Case”, which even reviewers who read their five or six novels a week remember with admiration. The subjects were severe and forbidding but Miss Pinsent moved “from one end to the other mightily” without a slip or the shadow of a turning. A few months since, looking over the scenes and situations that had convinced us by the strength of their presentations, we felt glad that Miss Pinsent has not published another novel.  Repetition would have been an intolerable feebleness. Strength on the field of romances very often means caducity upon another; Having read “Children of this World” however, we are convinced that she has a wonderful diversity of gift. The new novel is unlike the old in everything except reticence and forthrightness; she has advanced in ability and perhaps in power of comprehension. Certainly “Children of this World,” partly because of and partly in spite of its lack of humour, is one of the truest and sternest novels we have read for a long time. And in speaking of its lack of humour we may do it an injustice Miss Pinsent never allows a smile to flit across her page, and she has denied herself the relaxation of a single comic character, yet her main idea is so ironic that, for all its sadness, one laughs at the end of the book. … (description of the novel) … The machinery of the plot is heavy and complicated, but Miss Pinsent has managed it with no small skill. And what pleases us about the book is that all the characters are nice, pleasant, health-minded people, especially Gilbert’s wife, who might be a study for one of Mr. George Meredith’s girls. The style is strong and sustained, and Miss Pinsent is to be congratulated upon a distinct advance when advance was extremely difficult:

[“Children of this world” by Ellen F. Pinsent (London, Methuen & Co.)

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Transcribed in whole or part from scanned originals: Presented with or without modified text and punctuation. For absolute accuracy refer to the original newspapers. Source: The British Newspaper Archive.

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Referenced

GRO0245 Devonport: Ellen Frances Parker: 1866 – 1949

Book Review; “Children of this World” by Ellen F. Pinsent, Methuen, and Co. Problem novels are of necessity heavily handicapped. There are few, indeed, who can handle a serious subject with sufficient lightness to provide that relaxation which we naturally look for in fiction. Mrs. Pinsent is not one of these. And yet, even while we sigh under the too obvious labour of her task, we cannot but admire the care and patience with which she has developed her many characters to their natural completion … (review of content – agnosticism v Christianity) … Considering the circumstances it might have been wiser to have omitted the name of such a venerable institution as that of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, especially as in her minor details Mrs. Pinsent does not always show the careful accuracy that she does in the development of her characters; but his is a question of taste. The story suffers most from its entire lack of humour. There is much that is lifelike and natural; but nowhere is it relieved from a continuous seriousness, which is not natural in the comings and goings of human life.

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Transcribed in whole or part from scanned originals: Presented with or without modified text and punctuation. For absolute accuracy refer to the original newspapers. Source: The British Newspaper Archive.

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Referenced

GRO0245 Devonport: Ellen Frances Parker: 1866 – 1949

Children of the World: by Ellen F. Pinsent: Methuen and Co.: This is a curious and, in some senses, a striking story. Mrs. Pinsent has plenty of ideas and writes cleverly, but we cannot say that her book strikes us as at all “inevitable.” Her aim, if we are to judge from the hint given in the title of the book, is to illustrate the saying that “the children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light.” The heroines are two Newnham girls, both in a sense modern woman, but strangely different in type, Rachel Millman is a thoroughly religious, not to say pietistic girl, full of Christian, fervour, while her bosom friend, Janet Mauleverer, has studied herself into some agnostic frame of mind, and something of a pessimist. Janet, in spite of her views of …  independence, marries money and a title, and Rachel, after falling in love with a married man, commits suicide to save herself from her passion. We cannot say these conclusions follow from the authoress’s premises. But then she may retort that life is not logical. Quite so: But art should be; and though Mrs. Pinsent spends a good deal of genuine ability in the development of her thesis, “Children of this World” remains an unsatisfactory if unquestionably a clever book.

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Transcribed in whole or part from scanned originals: Presented with or without modified text and punctuation. For absolute accuracy refer to the original newspapers. Source: The British Newspaper Archive.

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Referenced

GRO0245 Devonport: Ellen Frances Parker: 1866 – 1949

New Books to Read at Farmer’s Library, 1, Edwardes Terrace, Kensington Road and Young’s Library, 36 High Street, Kensington: … … Fiction … … (includes) … … “Children of this World” … Ellen Pinsent …

[see also other dates]

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Transcribed in whole or part from scanned originals: Presented with or without modified text and punctuation. For absolute accuracy refer to the original newspapers. Source: The British Newspaper Archive.

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Referenced

GRO0245 Devonport: Ellen Frances Parker: 1866 – 1949

Publisher’s Announcement: Some Popular Books: six shillings each: … “Children of this World” by Mrs. Pinsent – author of “Jenny’s Case”.

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Transcribed in whole or part from scanned originals: Presented with or without modified text and punctuation. For absolute accuracy refer to the original newspapers. Source: The British Newspaper Archive.

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Referenced

GRO0245 Devonport: Ellen Frances Parker: 1866 – 1949

2) “Children of this World” by Ellen F. Pinsent, Methuen: … … 2) Children of this World shows such a lamentable falling off from the splendid promise of Mrs. Pinsent’s last book that one is tempted to wonder whether it be not an earlier effort, which would never have seen the light but for the golden opinions bought on from all sorts of people by Jenny’s Case. The “Children of this World” are not wise, nor are they particularly entertaining. Janet and Rachel are fellow students at Newnham, and Rachel falls in love with Janet’s brother Gilbert, who, in his turn, falls in love with one Kitty, and marries her after sonic passages, more or less tender, with Rachel. His marriage accomplished, he cannot resist the temptation to ‘carry on’ with his former love, which he does to such a tune that she takes poison to escape him. His wife forgives him, of course. With this story Janet’s love affairs are mixed in hopeless confusion. The language is correct and fluent; the characters are distinctly and carefully drawn; Gilbert and his hypochondriacal mother are particularly well thought out. The book might have been interesting—only it isn’t. Over every page a heavy web of dullness is woven, and no page possesses half the interest of the last one. Perhaps this page is welcomed with the more enthusiasm because it is numbered 412—and the book is closely printed too! We appeal to Mrs. Pinsent to give the world work better than this, and briefer; and not to let her only claim to distinction rest upon Jenny’s Case.

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Transcribed in whole or part from scanned originals: Presented with or without modified text and punctuation. For absolute accuracy refer to the original newspapers. Source: The British Newspaper Archive.

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GRO0245 Devonport: Ellen Frances Parker: 1866 – 1949

Ten Popular Books, Six Shillings Each: Mrs. Pinsent: “Children of this World”: by Mrs. Pinsent, Author of “Jenny’s Case”.

[see also other dates]

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Transcribed in whole or part from scanned originals: Presented with or without modified text and punctuation. For absolute accuracy refer to the original newspapers. Source: The British Newspaper Archive.

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Referenced

GRO0245 Devonport: Ellen Frances Parker: 1866 – 1949

It would be natural to think that authors who, like Miss Ellen F. Pinsent in her book, “Children of This World,” write with sympathy for the New Woman, would sometimes endeavour to show that that being is capable of living her life in a satisfactory fashion, at least to herself. The reverse is, however, the general rule, and in the present case the modern girl, typified in Rachel Millman, comes to signal grief. Neither the atmosphere of Newnham nor the hope of obtaining a degree prevents her from succumbing to the fascinations of the very commonplace Mauleverer, for whose sake, when he has already married someone else, she commits suicide. Rachel differs from the custom of her kind in entertaining strong religious impressions, which to a certain extent aid her in combating her unfortunate passion, but the story inclines to a morbid exaggeration both of sentiment and expression. Messrs. Methuen and Co. are the publishers.

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Transcribed in whole or part from scanned originals: Presented with or without modified text and punctuation. For absolute accuracy refer to the original newspapers. Source: The British Newspaper Archive.

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Referenced

GRO0245 Devonport: Ellen Frances Parker: 1866 – 1949

There is much clever writing in Mrs. Pinsent’s “Children of the World” (1 vol., Methuen and Co.). The story is told in a workmanlike manner, and the characters conduct themselves throughout like average human beings. The story opens at Cambridge, and we are introduced to Gilbert, an undergraduate, and his sister Janet, a beautiful modern young woman at Newnham. An old aunt supplies the place of absent parents in India, and life goes on ideally enough for those two young people. Hartley, the eldest son of a baronet, falls more seriously in love with Janet than is the wont of undergraduates, and Gilbert inspires Rachel Milman, Janet’s friend and the daughter of a Torquay tradesman, with an unalterable passion. Rachel, with her early Methodist training, on which has been grafted an hysterical Anglicanism, is a clever study. Life, one divines from the first, will lead her by a rough road. Indeed, life’s read is rough enough both for her and for Janet. The latter is a convincing, if not a sympathetic, figure:  The absolute lack of sympathy between Janet and her mother is well indicated, and when the latter dies, the girl is left forlorn save for the smart friends whose preconceived notions she outrages. Everything tends to make her struggle hard. Life treats Gilbert more kindly. Mrs. Pinsent draws her women with insight, but the men in the story are shadowy creations. Even Ralph Trent, whose experience, commonplace in itself, is told with pathos, is not convincing. The story does not move quickly enough. The opening chapters drag sadly and scarcely prepare the reader for the dramatic scenes of love and passion with which the romance culminates. 

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Transcribed in whole or part from scanned originals: Presented with or without modified text and punctuation. For absolute accuracy refer to the original newspapers. Source: The British Newspaper Archive.

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Referenced

GRO0245 Devonport: Ellen Frances Parker: 1866 – 1949