Book ID: a genre-breaking semi-romance historical fiction novel

April 6, 2023 6:00 AM

My friend Teresa once described a novel I'd like to track down, set in nineteenth-century Britain: "published by Warner as a sort of quasi-Regency bodice-ripper, back when bodice-rippers were getting big but there weren’t enough of them yet to feed the pipeline. But it wasn’t anything of the sort!" Help with identifying this book?

Teresa describes a historical fiction novel she read in high school (in the early 1970s, I believe):

The books that haunt me are the idiosyncratic little works you sometimes find shoehorned into a category where they don’t belong. They live out their brief month or two upon the wire racks, confuse a few readers of the category to which they’ve been assigned, then disappear, never having had a chance to be read for what they are.

There was one I read when I was in high school — Sarah, I think its title was; the cover was mostly magenta-purple — that was published by Warner as a sort of quasi-Regency bodice-ripper, back when bodice-rippers were getting big but there weren’t enough of them yet to feed the pipeline. But it wasn’t anything of the sort! Not only was it full of authentically unromantic period detail — the Corn Law Riots made a major appearance — but it wasn’t properly a romance at all. The heroine turns down the handsome and eligible young man who proposes to her near the end, and instead marries his very old and very much smarter uncle. The uncle dies in due course, leaving his money to her instead of the eligible young man. When we last see her, she’s making plans to move to Wales with her best girl friend and use the money to start a school. Young Teresa thought that was pretty cool. I wish I still had a copy.

I’m not saying that it was a deathless literary masterwork.

Anyone recognize this period novel? I'd love help with book identification for this one.

posted by brainwane to Media & Arts (4 answers total)

Best answer: Possibly Sara by Brian Cleeve, found at Amazon via the advanced book search which supports a publisher field and some date range options.
posted by Wobbuffet at 8:35 AM on April 6, 2023 [8 favorites]

Best answer: Oh, incidentally the Internet Archive currently has Sara, and a quick search shows something about corn laws in it. Quick confirmation of details like this in long out-of-print books is among the things we lose if Hachette wins.
posted by Wobbuffet at 9:49 AM on April 6, 2023 [9 favorites]

Response by poster: Teresa writes: "That's it! Bravo!"

Thank you both.
posted by brainwane at 10:33 AM on April 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

I read this book 20 years ago-- I bought it at the late, great Brand Books in Glendale, CA. I enjoyed it a lot, but I hated the ending, back when I read it. I'm not sure if I would like it better now, but at the time, it left a bad taste in my mouth.
posted by suburbanbeatnik at 12:21 PM on April 6, 2023 [2 favorites]