Life and Death of Harriett Frean

By May Sinclair

Book Overview

"A masterpiece." -- Walter Allen

A moral fable about the narrow and starved existence that results from self-sacrifice, this novel traces a Victorian woman's suffocating and stunted life. More than a case history of an underdeveloped individual who chooses loyalty to a friendship over the lure of romance, the story criticizes the values of nineteenth-century middle-class society and the destructiveness that lurks beneath the fa ade of good manners.
Less well known today than her contemporaries Virginia Woolf and Rebecca West, May Sinclair (1863-1946) was considered England's most distinguished female novelist in the years preceding World War I. Her other works include short stories, philosophical texts, a biography of the Bront sisters, and several poetry collections. Combining stream of consciousness with a traditional narrative, Life and Death of Harriett Frean reflects its author's mastery of modernist techniques.

"This small, perfect gem of a book ... looks unsparingly at the moral degeneration of one woman as her heart hardens into a protective bitterness." -- Jonathan Coe

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0486842398
• ISBN13: 9780486842394
• Release Date: August 2020
• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Length: 96 Pages
• Weight: 0.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 4.9" x 7.9"