Valerie

It is Marryat's last work, and the only one in which the interest centres entirely on women. For this reason, and from the eighteenth century flavour in some of its characters, the book inevitably recalls Miss Burney and her little read The Wanderer, in which, as in Valerie, a proud and sensitive girl is thrown on the world, and discovers by bitter experience as governess, companion, and music mistress the sneer that lurks beneath the smile of fashion and prosperity.