Mary Augusta Ward CBE was a British novelist who wrote under her married name as Mrs. Humphry Ward. She worked to improve education for the poor and she became the founding President of the Women's National Anti-Suffrage League. Ward began her career writing articles for Macmillan's Magazine while working on a book for children that was published in 1881 under the title Milly and Olly. This was followed in 1884 by a more ambitious, though slight, study of modern life, Miss Bretherton, the story of an actress. Ward's novels contained strong religious subject matter relevant to Victorian values she herself practiced. Her popularity spread beyond Great Britain to the United States.

Excerpt from Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. 1 of 2 "I must be turning back. A dreary day for anyone coming fresh to these parts!" So saying, Mr. Helbeck stood still - both hands resting on his thick stick - while his gaze slowly swept the straight white road in front of him and the landscape to either side. Before him stretched the marsh lands of the Flent valley, a broad alluvial plain brought down by the rivers Flent and Greet on their way to the estuary and the sea. From the slight rising ground on which he stood, he could see the great peat mosses about the river-mouths, marked here and there by lines of weather-beaten trees, or by more solid dots of black which the eye of the inhabitant knew to be peat stacks. 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.