Miss Marjoribanks

<p>When Dr. Marjoribanks’s wife dies, his teenage daughter makes it her purpose in life “to be a comfort to dear papa.” At least, Lucilla thinks, ten years of such devotion might suffice, by which time she might have begun to “go off.” But beneath this grand intention lies a yet more ambitious plan: to revolutionize the moribund and constricted social life of Carlingford. She is remarkably well-endowed for such an aspiration, being of able mind and otherwise ample proportions.</p> <p>As Lucilla’s plans unfold, her Thursday evenings become a great success, and draw into her sphere characters whose lives now become deeply entwined with her own. Naturally, complications of various kinds arise leading to a crisis which taxes Lucilla’s gifts and genius to the utmost.</p> <p>The novel falls into two distinct parts, for after this first phase of Lucilla’s career reaches its denouement, <a href=" skips over ten years, to that very point at which Lucilla feared she would be “going off.” Events in these more mature years of Miss Marjoribanks’s life are set in the time corresponding roughly to that of <a href=" Chapel</i></a>, an earlier work in the <a href=" of Carlingford</a>.</p> <p>Modern