Miss Granby's Secret: or The Bastard of Pinsk

In this captivating novel, the reader is drawn into the intriguing life of the fabulously successful Victorian romance author, Adelaide Granby, better known as Aunt Addie. Upon her death in 1912, Aunt Addie's independent-minded, suffragette niece, Pamela, inherits a stack of her aunt's secret papers, including youthful diaries and an unintentionally hilarious unpublished first novel, entitled "The Bastard of Pinsk."

As Pamela explores these documents and talks with those who knew her aunt, the reader is irresistibly drawn into the intriguing world of Aunt Addie's romantic sensibility. The novel, both sentimental and brutally honest, is nostalgic for and horrified by the sentiments of the past, hilarious and poignant, all at once.

Through the brilliance of Eleanor Farjeon's writing, the reader is posed with surprisingly powerful questions about what makes a love "real" and how much one really needs to know to experience it. This new edition features a superb introduction by twentieth-century women's historian, Elizabeth Crawford, who delves into the "naughtiness of a definitely mauve tint" that Beatrice Sherman of the New York Times described in her review.

The story unfolds as Pamela discovers the depth of her aunt's emotions and the extent of her romantic experiences. Aunt Addie, a fabulously successful author of 49 volumes of gushing, melodramatic Victorian romance, had a life that was far more complex than her published works would suggest. Through the revelations in her diaries and unpublished novel, the reader is invited to explore the true nature of Aunt Addie's love life and the factors that shaped her artistic sensibilities.

The novel is a captivating blend of sentiment and brutality, nostalgia and horror, hilarity and poignancy. Farjeon's masterful storytelling invites the reader to consider the universal questions of what constitutes a "real" love and how much one must know to fully experience it. The introduction by Elizabeth Crawford further enhances the reader's understanding of the historical and cultural context in which Aunt Addie's story unfolds.

Through the lens of Aunt Addie's life, the novel offers a thoughtful and engaging exploration of the complexities of love, the power of art to shape and reflect human experiences, and the ways in which the sentiments of the past continue to resonate in the present. Readers will be captivated by the intrigue and depth of this literary work, which seamlessly blends historical fiction with timeless themes of the human condition.

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