Irene Iddesleigh

First printed in 1897, Irene Iddesleigh is the novel that made Amanda McKittrick Ros a legend—celebrated, debated, and lovingly mocked as perhaps the most gloriously overwrought book in the English language. Within these pages, an orphaned heiress, a loveless marriage, a hidden chamber, and a parade of sighing confidants unfold in prose of unmatched ornament: sentences that coil, flourish, and occasionally collapse under the weight of their own adjectives. Yet there is real pleasure here. Read straight, the novel is a delirious Victorian melodrama of love, betrayal, and revenge; read aloud, it is irresistible. This edition reproduces the COMPLETE, UNABRIDGED original text, prefaced by a new introduction that places Ros and her improbable career in context, and accompanied by reader's notes that illuminate the novel's plot, its famous passages, and its afterlife among writers from Mark Twain to the Inklings. Part of The Founding Texts Library.