Broughton, RHODA

Broughton, RHODA, a popular novelist, was the daughter of a clergyman, and was born 29th November 1840. One of her first novels, and perhaps her best, is Not Wisely but Too Well (1867). Others are Cometh up as a Flower (1867), Red as a Rose is She (1870), Nancy (1873), Joan (1876), Belinda (1883), Doctor Cupid (1886), Alas! (1890), A Beginner (1894), Scylla and Charybdis (1895), Dear Faustina (1897), The Game and the Candle (1899). Her later works are not her best. Her plots are usually but ill constructed, her cynicism is shallow and unreal, and her stories too often contain equivocal situations unjustified by dramatic necessity; but the work shows a vigorous individuality, and the style is clever and graphic, though too often marred by a vulgarity that seems in grain. 'In Miss Broughton's determination not to be mawkish or missish,' says Mr Trollope, 'she has made her ladies do and say things which ladies would not do and say.' Her heroines need not be so often plain, so often extravagantly worship or detest their parents, nor take such an unconscionable time in dying; while her abuse of italics and the present tense are devices that are merely monotonous, and add no strength to the work of so clever a writer.