
Writing stories that are extravagant & fanciful fifteen-year old Angel retreats to a world of romance escaping the drabness of provincial life. She knows she is different that she is destined to become a feted authoress owner of great riches & of Paradise House.. . After reading The Lady Irania publishers Brace & Gilchrist are certain the novel will be a success in spite of
- & perhaps because of
- its overblown style. But they are curious as to who could have written such a book: ' Some old lady romanticising behind lace-curtains'.. .' Angelica Deverell is too good a name to be true.. .she might be an old man. It would be an amusing variation. You are expecting to meet Mary Anne Evans & in Walks George Eliot twirling his moustache.' So nothing can prepare them for the pale young woman who sits before them with not a seed of irony or a grain of humour in her soul.