Mrs. Martell

‘As far as I am concerned, Aunt Violet, I don’t want another penny of your money. I can go out and earn my bread’ and she saw a distinct picture of herself working her fingers to the bone and being seduced by goodness knows whom.

Obsessed with money and class and all the appearances of a sophisticated life, but coming herself from genteel poverty, Cathie Martell rarely loses her focus on getting what she wants, regardless of the feelings or happiness of those who get in her way. Her Aunt Violet, for example, who finances her education, or her first husband, or the man she’s set her sights on to be her second (not to mention that man’s current wife).

Elizabeth Eliot’s third novel, first published in 1953, follows an utterly self-absorbed, superficial woman from her teens to her second marriage. But if that sounds unsavoury, you clearly haven't encountered Eliot’s giddy prose, as packed with clever insights and a sharp eye for detail as it is with humour. This new edition includes an introduction by Elizabeth Crawford.

Furrowed Middlebrow and Dean Street Press have also reprinted three of Eliot’s other long-neglected novels—Alice, Henry, and Cecil—in their first new editions for more than half a century.

“Malicious, alarmingly observant and continually amusing” Sunday Times

“There are sad patches in this book because wickedness is a sad business, but also enchantingly funny ones. Lady Elizabeth’s writing is light and witty as ever—delicious conversation pieces again—and her judgment of people is always penetrating and often tolerant” Time and Tide

“Written with a humour that is adult without being cynical and from an outlook that is observant without being critical” The Sphere