A World Too Wide - Hardcover

Susan Moore

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0002235420 ISBN 13: 9780002235426

Publisher: St Martins Pr, 1989

Synopsis

This saga is set against the background of the industrial revolution and describes the love affair between the neglected son of a businessman and the daughter of a London prostitute. The author also wrote "Paths of Fortune".

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

The Byford family was introduced in Paths of Fortune , which followed the growing up of Kate and Sophy, and their feckless younger brother, in rural Regency England. Now it is 1812; Kate has married a wealthy American and lives in Virginia; Sophy, wife of James Fraser, a neophyte inventor working on the prototype of the steamship, leaves her young son in England to join her husband in New York. The Napoleonic war results in the blockade of the port of New York, putting Sophy in financial and physical peril. Meanwhile, Charity Michaelmas, a former servant now rising in the demimonde as a wealthy prostitute, seeks to protect her daughter, the unacknowledged offspring of the Byfords' brother. The many strands in this carefully told, at times slow-paced story create a vivid pattern unified in the final chapters, when a predictable romance comes to fruition for the next generation.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal:

This overlong saga is indeed "a world too wide" and a disappointing sequel to Paths of Fortune (LJ 8/85). Beginning in 1812, it loosely covers about 20 years in the lives of Sophy and James Fraser in England and Sophy's sister Kate and husband, Joseph Lee, in America. It also follows Georgiana Michaelmas, the illegitimate daughter of Katy and Sophy's brother and a former servant, now a well-to-do prostitute. In between are tucked snippets of the Napoleonic wars, a shipbuilding venture turned bad, postwar America, much dashing from continent to continent, and characters who strut and fret for a moment on the page only to disappear. A love interest holds momentary attention, but it comes after so much uneven meandering that most readers won't persevere. Perhaps for large collections owning the earlier volume.
- Joan Hinkemeyer, Englewood P.L., Col.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: St Martins Pr
• Publication date: 1989
• ISBN 10: 0002235420
• ISBN 13: 9780002235426
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 336