The Rival Suitors

The Novel

A young orphan girl is brought up by her two cousins, an elderly maiden lady and her younger brother, a brave sailor, who is very much in love with his ward. She, unconscious of the state of his heart, is wooed and won by a stranger, dark, fascinating, rich, and much older than herself, who first attracts her by the gallantry with which he leaps into the sea to save a strange French boy who is in danger of drowning. After she has married this gentleman, she finds out that her husband hides a dark secret...


The Author

Catherine Anne Austen (Mrs. Hubback) is well-known and highly esteemed as a writer; for her novels are in themselves good, and they have additional interest as coming from the niece of Jane Austen. The family connection has been most beneficial to Mrs. Hubback in literature. Catherine Anne Austen has been a prolific creator of novels, for we believe that The Younger Sister, The Wife's Sister, The Rival Suitors, The Old Vicarage, May and December, Malvern, Life and its Lessons, and Agnes Milbourne, are not all the fictions which have proceeded from her pen since the commencement of 1850. (Novels and novelists, 1858)


Contemporary Reviews (1857)

"A very good novel, the best with which Mrs. Hubback has favoured us; it is well written, carefully worked out, and very interesting."—Athenaum


"The present season is begun well by the novelists. Mrs. Hubback has done perfect justice to herself in the story of the 'Rival Suitors' "—Examiner


"A good story, well told, and we can recommend it to novel readers as worth perusal."—Globe


"Like Mrs. Hubback's former stories, The Rival Suitors will please all who are not satiated with novels of the class, dealing with the ordinary routine of relationships and affections in a limited sphere of modern life. Within that circle the writer shows considerable knowledge of character, and skill in its delineation. In its morals the book is innocuous, and in some of its lessons instructive, for those who must ply the social treadmill."—The Literary Gazette


"The Rival Suitors is a very stirring story, improving as it goes on. The latter portion of it is romantically dramatic, and proves that Mrs. Hubback can conceive and execute with graphic hardihood. She has chosen, as we said, at the outset, a particular route in the world of fiction, and she passes throughout, without dallying by the way, rendering every step she takes attractive to the spectator."— Observer