The late Victorian novelist Mrs. Humphry Ward (Mary Augusta Ward) embraced the novel as her medium for exploring the serious dilemmas of the age. Her 1888 masterpiece ‘Robert Elsmere’, a novel on the theme of religious faith and doubt, enjoyed phenomenal sales on both sides of the Atlantic. Altogether Ward published 26 novels and was the world’s best-selling novelist at the turn of the century, earning royalties unprecedented at the time. For the first time in publishing history, this eBook presents Ward’s complete works, with numerous illustrations, rare texts, informative introductions and the usual Delphi bonus material. (Version 1) * Beautifully illustrated with images relating to Ward’s life and works * Concise introductions to the major texts * All 26 novels, with individual contents tables * Features rare books appearing for the first time in digital publishing * Images of how the books were first published, giving your eReader a taste of the original texts * Excellent formatting of the texts * Famous works are fully illustrated with their original artwork * Ward’s non-fiction, including rare essays – available in no other collection * Ward’s autobiography * Features a bonus biography – discover Ward’s literary life * Ordering of texts into chronological order and genres Please visit www.delphiclassics.com to browse through our range of exciting titles CONTENTS: The Novels Milly and Olly (1881) Miss Bretherton (1884) Robert Elsmere (1888) The History of David Grieve (1892) Marcella (1894) The Story of Bessie Costrell (1895) Sir George Tressady (1896) Helbeck of Bannisdale (1898) Eleanor (1900) Lady Rose’s Daughter (1903) The Marriage of William Ashe (1905) Fenwick’s Career (1906) Diana Mallory (1908) Daphne (1909) Canadian Born (1910) The Case of Richard Meynell (1911) The Mating of Lydia (1913) The Coryston Family (1913) Delia Blanchflower (1914) Eltham House (1915) A Great Success (1915) Lady Connie (1916) Missing (1917) The War and Elizabeth (1918) Cousin Philip (1919) Harvest (1920) The Non-Fiction Amiel’s Journal (1885) The Brontë Prefaces (1899) Anti-Suffrage Essays (1908) John Lyly (1911) England’s Effort: Six Letters to an American Friend (1916) Wordsworth’s Valley in War-Time (1916) Towards the Goal (1917) Fields of Victory (1919) The Autobiography A Writer’s Recollections (1918) The Biography The Life of Mrs. Humphry Ward by Janet Penrose Trevelyan Please visit www.delphiclassics.com to browse through our range of exciting titles or to purchase this eBook as a Parts Edition of individual eBooks

"Hullo! No!--Yes!--upon my soul, it is Jacob! Why, Delafield, my dear fellow, how are you?" So saying--on a February evening a good many years ago--an elderly gentleman in evening dress flung himself out of his cab, which had just stopped before a house in Bruton Street, and hastily went to meet a young man who was at the same moment stepping out of another hansom a little farther down the pavement. The pleasure in the older man's voice rang clear, and the younger met him with an equal cordiality, expressed perhaps through a manner more leisurely and restrained. "So you are home, Sir Wilfrid? You were announced, I saw. But I thought Paris would have detained you a bit." "Paris? Not I! Half the people I ever knew there are dead, and the rest are uncivil. Well, and how are you getting on? Making your fortune, eh?" And, slipping his arm inside the young man's, the speaker walked back with him, along a line of carriages, towards a house which showed a group of footmen at its open door. Jacob Delafield smiled. "The business of a land agent seems to be to spend some one else's--as far as I've yet gone." "Land agent! I thought you were at the bar?" "I was, but the briefs didn't come in. My cousin offered me the care of his Essex estates. I like the country--always have. So I thought I'd better accept." "What--the Duke? Lucky fellow! A regular income, and no anxieties. I expect you're pretty well paid?" "Oh, I'm not badly paid," replied the young man, tranquilly. "Of course you're going to Lady Henry's?" "Of course. Here we are." The older man paused outside the line of servants waiting at the door, and spoke in a lower tone. "How is she? Failing at all?" Jacob Delafield hesitated. "She's grown very blind--and perhaps rather more infirm, generally. But she is at home, as usual--every evening for a few people, and for a good many on Wednesdays." "Is she still alone--or is there any relation who looks after her?" "Relation? No. She detests them all." "Except you?"

"By examining literary portraits of the woman as artist, Linda M. Lewis traces the matrilineal inheritance of four Victorian novelists and poets: George Eliot, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Geraldine Jewsbury, and Mrs. Humphry Ward. She argues that while the male Romantic artist saw himself as god and hero, the woman of genius lacked a guiding myth until Germaine de Stael and George Sand created one. The protagonists of Stael's Corinne and Sand's Consuelo combine attributes of the goddess Athena, the Virgin Mary, Virgil's Sibyl, and Dante's Beatrice. Lewis illustrates how the resulting Corinne/Consuelo effect is exhibited in scores of English artist-as-heroine narratives, particularly in the works of these four prominent writers who most consciously and elaborately allude to the French literary matriarchs." "Exploring a connection between French and English literature and providing fresh insight, Germaine de Stael, George Sand, and the Victorian Woman Artist makes a major contribution to our understanding of nineteenth-century feminism."--Jacket.