Cirrus@Austlit

'A passionate and controversial novel set in turn-of-the-century Europe

'Henry Handel Richardson’s debut, published in London in 1908, is set in the music scene of Leipzig, a cosmopolitan centre for the arts drawing students from around the world—among them Maurice Guest, a young Englishman, who falls helplessly in love with an Australian woman, Louise Dufrayer. Maurice Guest is the story of this overwhelming passion.

'The novel was deemed too controversial to be published as Richardson intended, and she was forced to cut twenty thousand words from the original manuscript and tone down its language.' (Publication summary)

'An almost uninterrupted residence of nearly thirty years in New South Wales, during which period the social condition of the Colony and its relation to the Empire underwent a complete revolution, is the justification offered by the author for the publication of this book, in the hope that his recollections may prove, in some degree, both amusing and instructive...' (Source: Introductory Chapter)

"The painstaking researches of Mr J.W. Earnshaw of Sydney have revealed that the convicts as James Grove, a well-to-do die sinker and engraver in Birmingham, who, being then 33 years of age, was sentenced at Warwick Gaol Delivery on 23 March, 1802, to life imprisonment for engraving a copper plate, which could be used for forging Bank of England notes" (Ferguson, 1851-1900, p.308).

'With money in his pocket after making his fortune in the South Seas, Richard Hatteras has London at his feet. Running afoul of the deadly Dr Nikola, however, was the worst thing he could do. Soon, young Dick is swept up into a maelstrom of blackmail, hypnotism, deceit and murder, where his betrothed is in danger, his potential father-in-law’s reputation is on the brink of ruination, and his very sanity is at stake. What can a two-fisted adventurer do against the vast and cold intellect that is Dr Nikola?'

Source: Publisher's blurb, Chimaera edition.

'It is a detective story, and has to do with buried treasures stolen from the ruined palaces of a forgotten city in China by three adventurers, one of whom tricks his partners and escapes with the spoils. The scene then shifts to the Occident - to London, Paris, and Italy - where the hero detective follows the absconding partner in order to restore to the other adventurers their booty'.

Source: New York Times, 6 July 1901.