Cirrus@Austlit

Engrossing understated romance with a touch of irony [stands out in the recent dross anyway!] An Englishman returns to London after finally making a fortune in Arizona. He determines to find and assist an old but penurious friend and his daughter. The friend has turned writer and disappeared but with the help of his publisher, Mr Blackwell, an author of romances - Hester Mullens, the British Museum and a poor printer he traces the daughter and she agrees to marry him ... She calls it all off when she discovers a cruel letter from him to her father, and only when the father is discovered as an auctioneer's clerk, having given up the cruel profession of writing, are they reconciled. She loves and marries another and the narrator is left with - Miss Mullens. Light, amusing and varied. (PB)