The Story of Avis (Classic Reprint) - Softcover

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1330027701 ISBN 13: 9781330027707

Publisher: Forgotten Books, 2018

Synopsis

Excerpt from The Story of Avis

"And all I saw was on the sunny ground,
The flying shadow of an unseen bird."

What was it about her?

Coy Bishop at the Poetry Club that night, while a theological student with a cold in his head was declaiming from the second canto, sat perversely wondering. It was becoming to Coy to wonder; she did not very often, - being a blonde, with a small mouth and happy eyes.

She changed the accent of her thoughts as they pursued her; out of irresistible sympathy, perhaps with the reader, who experienced some elocutionary difficulty in changing his; though, indeed, she found her own revery so much more to the purpose just then than her desire for literary culture, that she conceived a distaste for the 3 roung gentleman as a tiresome interruption, and hoped that some of the girls would refuse him before the winter was over.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

About this title

Review:

Avis is a nineteenth-century painter who strives to keep herself free of marriage and entanglements. As a child, Avis decides that given a woman's options of marriage or being a "lady," "I think I'd rather keep dogs." She is caught all the same, by a "modern man" and through her life, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps describes the struggle of a woman to be wife, mother, and artist. Although Avis declares and her fiance agrees that she must not "resign my profession as an artist," the reality greets her with their first house: "It was not quite clear where the studio was to be, unless in the attic." But the house is near the college, where her husband teaches, and that "in the view of the New England winters, and the delicate health of the young professor, was decisive." She returns from an hour in her studio to clogged drains and unexpected company, descending "from the sphinx to the drainpipe in one fell swoop." Truly, she does hate housekeeping, and while she loves her baby, "sometimes, sitting burdened with the child upon her arms, she looked out and off upon the summer sky with a strangling desolation like that of a forgotten diver, who sees the clouds flit, from the bottom of the sea." And so it goes. How modern is the "modern man" and how much do women's roles ever change? This book, written more than one hundred years ago, will still seem very real to many women today. -- For great reviews of books for girls, check out Let's Hear It for the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14. -- From 500 Great Books by Women; review by Erica Bauermeister

About this edition

• Publisher: Forgotten Books
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 1330027701
• ISBN 13: 9781330027707
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 459