BROUGHTON, Rhoda — Second Thoughts. A Novel. Two Volumes in One

Chicago, IL Belford & Co First American edition pp. 249, ads. 8vo. Bound in original blue cloth, blocked in blind. Rubbing to the extremities, light scuffing and a touch of soiling to the cloth, front endpapers beginning to split, but the hinge is tight. A few page corners dogeared, text generally clean and unmarked. Broughton (1840-1920) was a British writer, quite popular in her day, being described as one of the 'Queens of the Circulating Libraries'. In her early years she was known for writing raacy, if not slacious novels (according to the stanards of the times), while in her later years, her novels were sometimes criticized as being plodding. Somerset Maugham, in his short story 'The Round Dozen', relates a conversation with Broughton in which she said that when she was young people said her books were fast and when she was old they said they were slow, and it was very hard since she had written exactly the same sort of book for forty years. This title was first published by Richard Bentley, in London, in 1880, and by Belford & Co. in the U.S. the same year. Overall, a good copy of a rather scarce title from an author whom critic Richard C. Tobias called '...the leading women novelist in England between the death of George Eliot and the beginning of Virginia Woolf's career.'.