The Queerness of Celia

(no dust jacket) [moderately worn book, slight fraying to cloth at bottom front corner, front hinge cracked, gilt spine lettering dulled, a bit of soiling/darkening to page edges]. From a contemporary review of the book in The Brooklyn Citizen, whose critic thought it "an unhackneyed romantic novel": "Celia, daughter of a painter of unrecognized genius who drank and treated her cruelly, is left an orphan at the tender age of 14 and becomes the ward of Hilary Fraser, a rich New Yorker in his late thirties. Fraser's sister, Mrs. Eversham, takes the girl in charge and puts her in a convent school in France, later introducing her into society, along with her own daughter. On the death of Mrs. Eversham, with Celia then 21, Fraser in desperation as to what to do with his ward, proposes a marriage in name only, to which our heroine consents. The development from this point is original and sensationally dramatic. The plot leads through the theatrical world, into the world of music, and all through New York society of fifteen years ago. [The story] never loses its interest, never lapses into the commonplace or the vulgar, but keeps on marching without break in the suspense until it reaches a most felicitous" conclusion. The Virginia-born author was a popular novelist who published her first books in 1888; she picked up her "Princess" title in 1896 by marrying Prince Pierre Troubetzkoy, an artist and aristocrat to whom she was introduced by Oscar Wilde, following an unhappy first marriage to and divorce from a great-great grandson of John Jacob Astor.

Product Info

Publisher: Frederick A. Stokes Company

Year: 1926

Type: Used

Binding: Hardcover

First Edition

Seller Info

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