Riddles of Love

Sidney L. Blanchard's Riddles of Love is a delightful Victorian novel of manners that blends romance with sparkling social satire in a deft, witty style that will remind readers of Jane Austen and Charles Lamb.

The story follows the fortunes of May Pemberton as she passes from Shuttleton, an ugly little manufacturing town, to a triumphant debut on the London stage. Repelled by the aggressive compliments paid to her by her admirers, May abandons her career to accompany her father to colonial India. Her retirement from theatrical fame, which happens to coincide with a colonial rebellion, is anything but placid. The interlocking love triangles of Blanchard's story are as multifaceted as the lost diamond necklace that sets the plot in motion.

This new edition, the first in 142 years, reprints the original illustrations of Adelaide Claxton and is supplemented with endnotes and an Anglo-Indian glossary.