Women's Tragedies

As the title suggests, H.D. Lowry's short stories present a series of episodes that illustrate some of the particular tragedies besetting all kinds of Victorian women. The tales are varied in theme and tone, including stories of disenchanted children, jealous lovers, abandoned wives, vengeful witches, village beauties and urban socialites - all of whom illustrate some of the discontentments experienced by women in late-Victorian society. The book also contains a fascinating sequence of stories set in the distant past, in which the author imagines a particularly gruesome tragedy that might have attended the ancient rights of stone-age Cornwall.