Mrs Oliphant: 80 books

Phoebe, Junior: A Last Chronicle of Carlingford (also spelled Phœbe, Junior) is an 1876 novel by Margaret Oliphant. It follows the exploits of its heroine, Phoebe Beecham, as she learns the true history of her family history. This novel is the last of the six Carlingford Chronicles, and is set roughly in the early 1860s to late 1870s. (Excerpt from Wikipedia)

Two narrators each tell their own story in segments, and eventually their stories will merge. First is Milly Langham, née Mortimer, who tells of her orphaned childhood and how she came to marry Lieutenant Harry Langham. The second narrator is Millicent Mortimer, who resides with her sister at their...

This early novel centres on the Atheling family, especially on the three young people Agnes, Marion, and Charlie. Each has a special gift: Agnes has genius as a writer, Marion has beauty, and Charlie will find his gift in the course of the story. The novel is told mostly from Agnes' point of view....

Excerpt: ""Father,” said Dora, “I am going upstairs for a little, to see Mrs. Hesketh, if you have no objection.” “And who is Mrs. Hesketh, if I might make so bold as to ask?” Mr. Mannering said, lifting his eyes from his evening paper. “Father! I told you all about her on Sunday—that...

Kate Courtney, fifteen, is an heiress with a house in the country - and a rather inflated idea of what her position entails. But she has no one who cares anything about her. She believes she has found happiness when she goes to live with her aunt Mrs Anderson and her cousin Ombra (whose name means...

Colonel and Mrs Kingsward have been travelling in Germany with their three eldest children, for the health of Mrs Kingsward. Just after the Colonel returns to London, their daughter Bee becomes engaged to Aubrey Leigh, a young man of independent means. But a vindictive "lady" writes to Colonel Kingsward,...

Excerpt: "It would have been hard, however, to have looked upon the face of Mrs James Ogilvy as she went about her little household duties in the morning, or took her walks about the garden, or knitted her stocking in the placid afternoon, and to have thought of her as discontented or struggling...

John Brownlow is a highly respected attorney; and he is the executor for Mrs Thomson's will, which left £50,000 to her daughter Phoebe. But he is also the beneficiary of that will, if Phoebe is not found within 25 years. As the years pass and Phoebe cannot be found, he begins to think of the money...

Walter Methven is an indolent young man of twenty-four. To the despair of his widowed mother, he prefers a circle of friends led by the shifty Captain Underwood to the regular pleasant society of their town. It is known that Walter is a distant relation of the Scottish Lord Erradeen; but it comes...

This early novel has many story lines. Central character Anne Ross is still young at age 23, but her maturity and reserve lead some to think she is already a confirmed spinster. Anne is determined to clear up a mystery about a murder, and thereby to clear the name of her brother Norman who vanished...

Excerpt: "He was a man approaching sixty, but in perfect health, and with no painful physical reminders that he had already accomplished the greater part of life’s journey. He was a successful man, who had attained at a comparatively early age the heights of his profession, and gained a name for...

The effect produced upon the general mind by the appearance of Charlotte Brontë in literature, and afterwards by the record of her life when that was over, is one which it is nowadays somewhat difficult to understand. Had the age been deficient in the art of fiction, or had it followed any long level...

Excerpt: "Mr and Mrs Robert Drummond lived in a pretty house in the Kensington district; a house, the very external aspect of which informed the passer-by who they were, or at least what the husband was. The house was embowered in its little garden; and in spring, with its lilacs and laburnums, looked...

A love story and a romantic coming of age.  Very well worth the read.