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.”

]]> ]]> ]]> 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.]]> Antonina, and “A Story of Modern Life.” Basil is high-born but falls in love with a linen-draper’s daughter, with whom he contracts a secret marriage. She is subsequently seduced by her father’s clerk, and Basil discovers them in a sordid hotel with walls so thin that he can hear them copulating (horrifying Collins’s contemporaries). In the resulting fight the seducer is thrown onto a newly macadamized road and horribly disfigured. The unfaithful wife dies of typhus and remorse. Later the rivals meet in Cornwall, and the seducer is thrown into a boiling sea.]]> ]]> ]]> The Westminster Review (1875): “Mr. Francillon cannot be dull . . . We cannot say that we care much for the Major with his Irish brogue and his Bohemian manners, but the adventures of Olympia in her disguise are decidedly amusing. Firefly, too, is a most original actress, and her philosophy of love is worth studying.” This is a novel that includes actresses, theatres, and a love triangle.]]> The Literary World (1882) remarked, “The only point of resemblance between Mr. Francillon’s heroine and King Cophetua lies in her marriage to a ‘beggar’ after she had decided never to marry.” Harry Reid, the owner of the Copleston Estate, dies, leaving a widow, a son, Alan, and a daughter, Helen. With good intentions the mother deceives her children into believing that they are penniless when they are not. Two Americans enter the picture, one good, the other not so. The widow Reid’s plans go awry, and what will Helen do?]]>