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Marianne Thornton (Abinger Editions)

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Forster tells of the fascinating period in which she lived, from George III through the last years of Victoria's reign, and of his own boyhood. Drawn from his own recollections and from her correspondence and journals. Here are glimpses of Marianne's friends: Lord Macaulay, William Wilberforce (the abolitionist), Hannah Moore (the reformer), and Florence Nightingale (who probably went off to the Crimea because she was tired of picking up her mother's spectacles, says Marianne), but above all it is the story of Marianne herself. She was one of nine children of a prominent banker and philanthropist, who observed her times at home at Battersea Rise, near London, with the persepective of a candid, charming, and intelligent lady possessed of social conscience.

Marianne's England was an England of stern moral rectitude...the fact that Henry Thornton married his deceased wife's sister caused a scandal in society and in Parliament (it was typical of Marianne's determined brother that he should move his family to the Continent and fight for a change in English law to make his marriage fully respectable, says she.) She never married and stayed at Battersea to preserve and protect the heritage (and worried that Napoleaon would cross the channel just to cut down her tulip tree). You can tell this book was written with love by E. M. Forster.

16 illustrations.

Refers to the 1956 1st edition.