Rhoda Broughton (1840–1920)
Author of Belinda
About the Author
Works by Rhoda Broughton
The Man with the Nose 4 copies
The game and the candle 2 copies
Concerning a vow 1 copy
Collected Stories 1 copy
A thorn in the flesh 1 copy
Between two stools 1 copy
The Devil and the deep sea 1 copy
Mamma 1 copy
Mrs. Bligh - a novel 1 copy
A widower indeed 1 copy
Joan 1 copy
Associated Works
The Mammoth Book of Victorian and Edwardian Ghost Stories (1995) — Contributor — 174 copies, 4 reviews
The Lifted Veil: The Book of Fantastic Literature by Women 1800-World War II (1806) — Contributor — 45 copies
Weird Women: Volume 2: 1840-1925: Classic Supernatural Fiction by Groundbreaking Female Writers (2021) — Contributor — 38 copies
Dead Drunk: Tales of Intoxication and Demon Drinks (Tales of the Weird) (2023) — Contributor — 32 copies
Masters of Shades and Shadows: An Anthology of Great Ghost Stories (1978) — Contributor — 12 copies, 1 review
The Lady Chillers: Classic Ghost and Horror Stories by Women Authors (2014) — Contributor — 4 copies
The Wimbourne Book of Victorian Ghost Stories (Annotated): Volume 15 (2023) — Contributor — 2 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Broughton, Rhoda
- Birthdate
- 1840-11-20
- Date of death
- 1920-06-05
- Gender
- female
- Occupations
- novelist
short story writer - Relationships
- Le Fanu, Joseph Sheridan (uncle)
Lowndes, Marie Belloc (friend) - Short biography
- Rhoda Broughton was born in Denbigh in North Wales, the daughter of a clergyman. She received a classical education, quite unusual for a girl in her era. Following the deaths of both her parents, she lived with her married sisters. In 1867, her first novel was serialized in the Dublin University Magazine, edited by her maternal uncle Sheridan Le Fanu, and then appeared in book form as Not Wisely but Too Well. Le Fanu introduced her to the publisher Richard Bentley, who accepted her second novel, Cometh Up as a Flower. Their professional relationship lasted until the end of the Bentley publishing house in the 1890s, when it was taken over by Macmillan. By then she had published 14 novels and went on to produce some 10 more, plus short stories. Her frank portrayal of women and strong heroines caused some critics at the time to accuse her work of being slight and sensationalistic. However, she had many literary friends, including Henry James and Marie Belloc Lowndes, who wrote the introduction for her last novel, A Fool in Her Folly (1920), published posthumously. Literary scholars now consider her an important Victorian novelist.
- Nationality
- UK
- Birthplace
- Denbigh, North Wales, UK
- Places of residence
- Headington Hill, England, UK
Oxford, Oxfordshire, England, UK - Place of death
- Headington Hill, England, UK
- Map Location
- UK
Members
Reviews
I found lots of good reasons to pickup a book by Rhoda Broughton. She’s been published by Virago, she’s been published by Victorian Secrets, I know that a friend with tastes similar to mine has read a good number of her books …..
It took me a while to decide what to read, and I’m not quite sure now what it was that put this book, her second novel, published in 1867, at the head of the queue, I just remember reading something about it somewhere. I’m so glad that I did because I loved show more this book, and I was smitten with its heroine from the very first page.
When I die I’ll be buried under that big old ash tree over yonder 0 the one that Dolly and I cut our names on with my old penknife nine, ten years ago now. I utterly reject and abdicate my reserved seat in the family mausoleum. I don’t see the fun of undergoing one’s dusty transformation between a mouldering grandpa and a mouldered great-grandpa. Every English gentleman or lady likes to have a room to themselves when they are alive. Why not when they are dead.”
I couldn’t help but love a girl who could declaim like that, who could open a conversation like that.
Nell Lestrange will tell her own story, eager to share every emotion and every insight, every idea and impression. Her voice is wonderful, because her head and her heart were clearly so very, very full.
There are times when her digressions weigh the story down, but there are far more times when it was lovely to read what she had to say about love, life, books, religion ….
Nell is one of two daughters of that last in the line of a great family, that can trace its lineage back to William the Conqueror. That great family is in decline, and her elderly, widowed father only hopes that he will live to see one, or maybe both daughters, marry well.
He didn’t realise that his daughter was desperately in love, that she had met the great love of her life as she was idling, alone in an untended graveyard.
That leaves Nell facing a terrible choice, because her lover is poor and because she adores her father and she knows that his dearest wish is to see her settled with another suitor who is so very eligible. She agonises over her decision, and try as she might she cannot find a way for her lover and her father and herself to be happy.
Nell’s sister forces her hand.
At first it seems that Dolly Lestrange, four years older than her sister, is simply too sensible, too practical, and unable to understand her sister’s passion, but as the story unfolds it is clear that the truth is worth than that, that Dolly is worse than that, and the consequences for Nell are tragic.
The story is simple, but it is made special by the way it is told.
Nell’s voice was underpinned by excellent writing, and Rhoda Broughton’s understanding of character and her command of the story stopped this from becoming a sensation novel. It’s a very human story of love, passion, betrayal, loss …
In its day it was deemed shocking – because Nell spoke of meeting her lover covertly, of enjoying his attention, of her reluctance to be intimate with the man she might have to marry – but there’s nothing at all that would shock a reader now.
The social events that Nell was pitched into were a little dull, but they were enlivened by the wit and irreverence of her observations.
The father-daughter relationship was beautifully drawn. They loved each other, they understood each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and their dialogue was pitch perfect. Nell had been left to run wild after her mother’s death, but still she tried to shield her father from the worries of running his household and the creditors that were beating at his door.
Nell could and would give everything for the people she loved, but without the she was lost.
I appreciated that Hugh – the suitor Nell was steered towards – was a good and decent man. He was just blind to some things.
Nell couldn’t bring herself to care for him, or to play the role that was expected of her, and so there could only be one conclusion.
It was tragic, but beautiful in a way that only fiction can be.
‘Cometh Up as a Flower’ is not a happy story, but it is wonderfully engaging.
I am so glad that I met Nell, and I am quite sure that I shall be reading more of Rhoda Broughton’s work. show less
It took me a while to decide what to read, and I’m not quite sure now what it was that put this book, her second novel, published in 1867, at the head of the queue, I just remember reading something about it somewhere. I’m so glad that I did because I loved show more this book, and I was smitten with its heroine from the very first page.
When I die I’ll be buried under that big old ash tree over yonder 0 the one that Dolly and I cut our names on with my old penknife nine, ten years ago now. I utterly reject and abdicate my reserved seat in the family mausoleum. I don’t see the fun of undergoing one’s dusty transformation between a mouldering grandpa and a mouldered great-grandpa. Every English gentleman or lady likes to have a room to themselves when they are alive. Why not when they are dead.”
I couldn’t help but love a girl who could declaim like that, who could open a conversation like that.
Nell Lestrange will tell her own story, eager to share every emotion and every insight, every idea and impression. Her voice is wonderful, because her head and her heart were clearly so very, very full.
There are times when her digressions weigh the story down, but there are far more times when it was lovely to read what she had to say about love, life, books, religion ….
Nell is one of two daughters of that last in the line of a great family, that can trace its lineage back to William the Conqueror. That great family is in decline, and her elderly, widowed father only hopes that he will live to see one, or maybe both daughters, marry well.
He didn’t realise that his daughter was desperately in love, that she had met the great love of her life as she was idling, alone in an untended graveyard.
That leaves Nell facing a terrible choice, because her lover is poor and because she adores her father and she knows that his dearest wish is to see her settled with another suitor who is so very eligible. She agonises over her decision, and try as she might she cannot find a way for her lover and her father and herself to be happy.
Nell’s sister forces her hand.
At first it seems that Dolly Lestrange, four years older than her sister, is simply too sensible, too practical, and unable to understand her sister’s passion, but as the story unfolds it is clear that the truth is worth than that, that Dolly is worse than that, and the consequences for Nell are tragic.
The story is simple, but it is made special by the way it is told.
Nell’s voice was underpinned by excellent writing, and Rhoda Broughton’s understanding of character and her command of the story stopped this from becoming a sensation novel. It’s a very human story of love, passion, betrayal, loss …
In its day it was deemed shocking – because Nell spoke of meeting her lover covertly, of enjoying his attention, of her reluctance to be intimate with the man she might have to marry – but there’s nothing at all that would shock a reader now.
The social events that Nell was pitched into were a little dull, but they were enlivened by the wit and irreverence of her observations.
The father-daughter relationship was beautifully drawn. They loved each other, they understood each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and their dialogue was pitch perfect. Nell had been left to run wild after her mother’s death, but still she tried to shield her father from the worries of running his household and the creditors that were beating at his door.
Nell could and would give everything for the people she loved, but without the she was lost.
I appreciated that Hugh – the suitor Nell was steered towards – was a good and decent man. He was just blind to some things.
Nell couldn’t bring herself to care for him, or to play the role that was expected of her, and so there could only be one conclusion.
It was tragic, but beautiful in a way that only fiction can be.
‘Cometh Up as a Flower’ is not a happy story, but it is wonderfully engaging.
I am so glad that I met Nell, and I am quite sure that I shall be reading more of Rhoda Broughton’s work. show less
Miss Broughton's novel mixes humour and pathos liberally and Nell Le Strange is one of the most interesting of Victorian heroines. She is witty, acerbic and head over heels in love with the dashing dragoon Richard - or perhaps head over skirts is a better description as she falls over them on first meeting him in an early very funny Bridget Jones moment. The sexual chemistry between them scintillates although Anthony Trollope condemned Rhoda Broughton for making ‘her ladies do and say show more things which ladies would not do and say’. I think faced with this dragoon officer they would Mr Trollope. Nell’s father Sir Adrian is a love, their tumble down mansion is in picturesque decline and her sister Dorothea is the evil villainess of the piece – although she has her defenders. Was it better to marry for love or money? I’m not giving plot spoilers but read Ouida’s Moths after this and you’ve got two fascinating popular Victorian writers interrogating the most sacred of Victorian institutions. Hurray for Miss Broughton! show less
"All my energy was directed upon one end," Professor Mark Pattison writes in his memoirs, "—to improve myself, to form my own mind, to sound things thoroughly, to free myself from the bondage of unreason, and the traditional prejudices which, when I first began to think, constituted the whole of my intellectual fabric. I have nothing beyond trivial personalities to tell in the way of incident. If there is anything of interest in my story, it is as a story of mental development."
Pattison, show more the Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford, devoted his life to scholarship. His major work was a biography of the late sixteenth-century classical scholar Isaac Casaubon, and it is as the putative model for another Casaubon—Mr. Edward Casaubon in George Eliot's Middlemarch—that Pattison is remembered today. Although the identification of Pattison with Eliot's Casaubon is disputed, Pattison was indisputably the model for Professor Forth, the dull, irritable "Professor of Etruscan" in Rhoda Broughton's Belinda. The unflattering likeness was so well-known that Pattison himself, on a visit to Broughton's home in Oxford, had himself announced as "Professor Forth."
The novel begins in Dresden in the spring. Belinda Churchill and her spirited, dog-loving younger sister Sarah are on holiday with their grandmother. While Sarah avidly collects beaux as if they were Dresden figurines, Belinda falls for the young English student David Rivers. Unfortunately, Belinda's shyness and insecurity make her appear cold, and Rivers fails to press his suit. The couple is parted, and Belinda, believing she has lost her true love forever, resigns herself to a loveless marriage with Professor Forth, who proceeds to suck every ounce of joy from her life.
Then Rivers reappears, still ardent and unattached. These days, Belinda would feel little hesitation about writing off her mistake and leaving the Professor. But in late Victorian England, she finds herself in a bind. Although Broughton's novel is shocking depiction of the soul-crushing tyranny of a bad Victorian marriage, it's difficult to warm to Belinda. Her beautiful cold exterior masks a rather foolish and rather shallow interior that easily fills up with bitterness and self-pity. Even her relationship with Rivers fails to generate enough of a spark to thaw Belinda. Her reserve freezes her out of her own life.
Belinda's husband is a monster—but so, in some way, is each of the characters: the flirtatious Sarah, the self-absorbed Mrs. Churchill, the tactless Miss Watson. Broughton creates a world in which the seeds of sympathy fall upon barren ground.
Professor Forth's major contribution to scholarship is an edition of the fragments of Menander. He is Professor of Etruscan, a language that exists only in a few scattered fragments and loan words. With the professor, Belinda is only able to find fragments of happiness, and Broughton seems to imply that such is life.
After she had posted a copy of her wedding announcement to Rivers, Belinda sits down to read to her husband. Curiously, the passage she reads to him is from Darwin: "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous successive slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find out no such case. No doubt many organs exist of which we do not know the transitional grades."
There is something that connects the apparent fragments of life, but poor Belinda cannot find it. She falteringly reads the passage to her husband, he asks her to repeat it ("pray repeat that last paragraph; I am unable to follow you; you are making nonsense of it!'), and she faints. show less
Pattison, show more the Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford, devoted his life to scholarship. His major work was a biography of the late sixteenth-century classical scholar Isaac Casaubon, and it is as the putative model for another Casaubon—Mr. Edward Casaubon in George Eliot's Middlemarch—that Pattison is remembered today. Although the identification of Pattison with Eliot's Casaubon is disputed, Pattison was indisputably the model for Professor Forth, the dull, irritable "Professor of Etruscan" in Rhoda Broughton's Belinda. The unflattering likeness was so well-known that Pattison himself, on a visit to Broughton's home in Oxford, had himself announced as "Professor Forth."
The novel begins in Dresden in the spring. Belinda Churchill and her spirited, dog-loving younger sister Sarah are on holiday with their grandmother. While Sarah avidly collects beaux as if they were Dresden figurines, Belinda falls for the young English student David Rivers. Unfortunately, Belinda's shyness and insecurity make her appear cold, and Rivers fails to press his suit. The couple is parted, and Belinda, believing she has lost her true love forever, resigns herself to a loveless marriage with Professor Forth, who proceeds to suck every ounce of joy from her life.
Then Rivers reappears, still ardent and unattached. These days, Belinda would feel little hesitation about writing off her mistake and leaving the Professor. But in late Victorian England, she finds herself in a bind. Although Broughton's novel is shocking depiction of the soul-crushing tyranny of a bad Victorian marriage, it's difficult to warm to Belinda. Her beautiful cold exterior masks a rather foolish and rather shallow interior that easily fills up with bitterness and self-pity. Even her relationship with Rivers fails to generate enough of a spark to thaw Belinda. Her reserve freezes her out of her own life.
Belinda's husband is a monster—but so, in some way, is each of the characters: the flirtatious Sarah, the self-absorbed Mrs. Churchill, the tactless Miss Watson. Broughton creates a world in which the seeds of sympathy fall upon barren ground.
Professor Forth's major contribution to scholarship is an edition of the fragments of Menander. He is Professor of Etruscan, a language that exists only in a few scattered fragments and loan words. With the professor, Belinda is only able to find fragments of happiness, and Broughton seems to imply that such is life.
After she had posted a copy of her wedding announcement to Rivers, Belinda sits down to read to her husband. Curiously, the passage she reads to him is from Darwin: "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous successive slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find out no such case. No doubt many organs exist of which we do not know the transitional grades."
There is something that connects the apparent fragments of life, but poor Belinda cannot find it. She falteringly reads the passage to her husband, he asks her to repeat it ("pray repeat that last paragraph; I am unable to follow you; you are making nonsense of it!'), and she faints. show less
This is the first of Rhoda Broughton's books, written when she was in her early 20s - and it is a very youthful book. There is an occasionally interventionist narrator, quoting Latin and Greek to appear old and wise; doomed romance with a mad, bad and dangerous to know hero, who I'm sure must twirl his moustaches; plenty of mid Victorian deathbeds, repentance and sinning; holy clergymen; renunciation, suffering and self-denial, alongside lush descriptions of passion, blossoming country show more walks, the sea - and of course the heroine, bewitching and coquettish, with fabulous hair, and of course doomed to be beaten down into virtuous submission. Rhoda Broughton is a lively and a funny writer - her comedy is sharp and trenchant; her romance full blooded, and her pious endings laid on with a trowel. show less
Awards
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Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 36
- Also by
- 22
- Members
- 290
- Popularity
- #80,655
- Rating
- 3.7
- Reviews
- 11
- ISBNs
- 83
- Languages
- 4
