Antonina, or The Fall of Rome, this is a historical romance set in 5th century Rome, ruled by the emperor Honorius. The heroine is a beautiful Roman maiden, a Christian, who captures the heart of the Gothic chieftain Hermanric. Hermanric is killed, and Antonia survives a number of dramatic and perilous situations, including being offered up as a virgin sacrifice to Serapis.]]> ]]> This is Grant Allen’s first published novel, and it reflects his point of view as a socialist and an agnostic. It is a satire on socialism and modern journalism. According to Elizabeth Miller in her Slow Print (2013), “In the radical press it was assumed that even a genuinely socialist novel would reach only

middle-class readers. J. Hunter Watts’s 1888 review of Grant Allen’s Philistia considers it ‘the best Socialist novel we have read’ but dryly notes that it ‘would have done us invaluable service in propaganda among the middle and upper classes, ‘who alone have leisure for novel reading,’ except that those classes are so unlikely to be swayed.”

]]> From The Spectator (3 October 1885): “We may rely upon Mr. Gibbon . . . to give us an interesting and wholesome story . . . Sir George Kerr, a nouveau riche, the desire of whose heart it is to become connected with the peerage, takes up the cause of one Wardlaw, who claims to be the representative of an earldom that is supposed to be extinct, with the idea that the Earl, his dignity once attained, will marry his daughter. The daughter, however, has, it will be guessed, other things in her head, and the usual complications follow.”

]]> sister-in-law, who then carries off his child and joins a band of gypsies, becoming their queen. The kidnapped daughter becomes “The Flower of the Forest” and
acquits herself with virtue.]]> The Athenaeum: “Honoria Legerton, “’her mother’s darling,’ is as pleasant a character as Mrs. Riddell has ever introduced to the public.”]]> The Scotsman (1893): “Few novelists have a right to the public approval than Mrs. J. H. Riddell.” This is another of Mrs. Riddell’s ghost stories with rather ordinary characters: law clerks, pensioners, real estate speculators, and developers. It seems at first to concentrate on the legal practicalities of renting out a house known to be haunted. The ghost is identified as an unscrupulous moneylender who attempted to ruin the wrong man and was killed for his efforts.]]> ]]> The Spectator (1878): “Mr. Gibbon begins his story with an exploit after the manner of ‘The Young Lochinvar,’ only that in this case the young lady is already married, at least if a marriage to which no consent has been given is valid. After this we are carried on over a breathless course of exciting events.”]]> The Saturday Review (1880): “. . . The six stories which are bound together under the deceptive title on the back of this volume, which only applies to the first of them, are as slight as may be . . .” The cover illustration applies to the first story, a thwarted romance between Milly and Eben – but all comes out right in the end.]]>