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Harriet [Paperback]

Elizabeth Jenkins , Rachel Cooke
4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
RRP: £14.00
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Product details

  • Paperback: 320 pages
  • Publisher: Persephone Books Ltd (19 April 2012)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1903155878
  • ISBN-13: 978-1903155875
  • Product Dimensions: 19.2 x 13.8 x 3.4 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 255,940 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Product Description

5.4"x7.6"x1.3"; 0.9 lb; 320 pages

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Customer Reviews

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars A masterpiece of grim Victorian crime. 1 May 2012
Format:Paperback
The Penge Murder Mystery was a notorious crime which came to light in 1877. Harriet Staunton - a woman with learning difficulties who was then deemed `simple-minded' or `a natural' -died of starvation and neglect along with her baby. Her husband Louis Staunton (Lewis Oman in the novel), his brother Patrick, his wife Elizabeth and her sister Alice (who was also Louis' mistress) were tried and convicted of her murder.

It was and still is a horrifying case which later merited a volume in the Notable British Trials Series which is where the author Elizabeth Jenkins came across the case and became `obsessed' with the Stauntons and the death of poor Harriet.

Harriet, written in 1934, is one of the very first novels to take a real life incident and fictionalise it in a way which is now very much in vogue. Elizabeth Jenkins had such a deft hand with characterisation that no-one in the novel comes across as overtly villainous as they might do in the hands of a lesser author. The reader is shown how greed, vanity and possessive love can lead these four people to commit such unimaginable crimes.

I felt a terrible sense of pity for Mrs Olgilvy (Harriet's mother Mrs Butterfield) and the despair which overtakes her when she realises she cannot prevent her daughter from marrying the fortune hunting Lewis Oman (Louis Staunton) and from then on there is an impending sense of tragedy because the reader knows how it will end.

Harriet is sensitively drawn and I felt her confusion when all the things she has known - care, comfort and love- from her mother are taken away from her and she is pushed more and more callously out of the picture so that the four can live the blissfully happy life they have always wanted if only they had had the money before. The coldness and disgust which Lewis, Alice, Elizabeth and Patrick begin to treat Harriet is terrifying and filled me with mounting shock and pity.

Harriet is a brilliantly accomplished and chilling read and I was gripped from start to finish and I read it in one sitting.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Disturbing 23 April 2012
By A Ryder
Format:Paperback
It doesn't seem right to call a book 'wonderful' when the subject matter is as grim as this. It's a novelised version of a true crime which happened in Penge, now a suburb of London, in the 1870s, and Jenkins wrote it in the early 1930s (it beat 'Frost in May' and 'A Handful of Dust' to a prestigious literary award). The eponymous Harriet is a rich young lady who had what we would now call learning difficulties, and she was married for her money and then shut away and neglected until she and her baby died of starvation. The stuff of Victorian melodrama is here rendered in a chillingly matter-of-fact, unflinching way which only heightens the tragedy of a vulnerable, trusting young woman in the hands of predators. Jenkins was apparently upset herself, by what she'd written, wondering how such a terrible thing could happen. All credit to her that she doesn't portray the Omans as soulless monsters, but corruptible, selfish and weak-willed human beings. What shocked Victorian and inter-war society should perhaps be less horrifying in an age of genocide and terrorism, but the tragedy here is undiminished.

I have also read two other Persephone titles, 'The Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes' and 'The Victorian Chaise-Longue' by Marghanita Laski and both were great, well-written reads. If you like the sinister, the tragic and the Victorians in a quality package, this is definitely worth a read.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars Gothic novel 10 Mar 2010
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This novel by Elizabeth Jenkins is beautifully written as you would expect from such a distinguished author. Her work has largely been forgotten but recently her Tortoise and the Hare was re-issued which lead me to want to read more. Harriet is now out of print but I obtained my copy from a seller in USA. It is a dark tale of selfishness and the helplessness of such women as Harriet and her Mother around the turn of the last century.
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