Diana Tempest - Cholmondeley, Mary

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Résumé :
Diana Tempest (1893) is novel by Mary Cholmondeley. Partly based on her experience as an artist from a wealthy landowning family, Diana Tempest is a story of greed, romance, and betrayal that faced backlash from critics for its controversial portrayal of female sexuality. Satirical and deeply observant of the hypocrisies of Victorian society, Diana Tempest is an essential work by one of Victorian England's bestselling novelists. Colonel Tempest, as a rule, took life very easily. If he had fits of uncontrolled passion now and then, they were quickly over. If his feelings were touched, that was quickly over too. But to-day his face was clouded. He had tried the usual antidotes for an impending attack of what he would have called 'the blues,' by which he meant any species of reflection calculated to give him that passing annoyance which was the deepest form of emotion of which he was capable. Unused to being denied, Colonel Tempest is unable to control himself following the death of his brother. Rather than mourn his loss, he laments the passing of the Tempest family fortune to his nephew John, a secretly illegitimate child whose claim as heir is fabricated at best. A notorious gambler, he makes a drunken bet that he will one day control the estate, unwittingly placing a bounty on John's head. At the same time, the Colonel's daughter Diana has begun to fall in love with the young heir, complicating her father's plans and welcoming disaster into her life. Diana Tempest is a tale of family, faith, and betrayal that explores the Victorian concept of the New Woman without sacrificing its entertaining narrative. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Mary Cholmondeley's Diana Tempest is a classic work of British literature reimagined for modern readers....

Biographie:
Mary Cholmondeley was born on June 8, 1859, and died on July 15, 1925. Her best-selling book Red Pottage parodied narrow-minded country living and religious hypocrisy. In 1918, a silent film version of it was created. Mary Cholmondeley was the third of Rev. Richard Hugh Cholmondeley's (1827 1910) eight children, and his wife Emily Beaumont's (1831 1893) children were born at Hodnet near Market Drayton in Shropshire. Her niece, Stella Benson, was a writer, and her great-uncle, Reginald Heber, was a bishop who wrote hymns. The American novelist Mark Twain was hosted by his uncle, Reginald Cholmondeley of Condover Hall, during his trips to England. Mary's family narrative, Under One Roof (1918), includes excerpts from her sister Hester's poems and diaries, which she composed and maintained before her death in 1892. Following short stays at Leaton, Shropshire, and Farnborough, Warwickshire, the family moved back to Hodnet in 1874 when her father succeeded his father as rector. Despite having asthma, she spent a large portion of the first thirty years of her life supporting her father in his parish work and her ailing mother in running the home. From a young age, she would tell stories to amuse her siblings....

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