These essays comprise the first extensive reappraisal of Charles Lever for over 50 years. Once regarded as the equal of Dickens, Trollope and Thackeray, Lever's public turned their backs on him when he changed style and genre after making his name with comic military tales. He never captured his early popularity, but his later novels in fact manifest a much more serious and crafted approach to fiction and richly deserve revival. Lever's own turbulent and often unhappy life of social and cultural exile in Europe provides the hidden theme of many of his better novels. Continental and Irish settings and preoccupations are juxtaposed, making his contribution to the Anglo-Irish novel an unusual and challenging one. Lever is a shrewd observer of characteróparticularly of female character; few of his better-remembered contemporaries write with more insight about women; old, young, rich, poor; loving, hating, dominating, subjected. His eye for place is acute; Scott is his model, but Lever's ability to correlate character with environment is finely developed. His political observations are shrewd and balanced.

Excerpt from The Life of Charles Lever, Vol. 2 of 2 Off to the Continent - Lever as a J ournalist - Excites a sensation at Carlsruhe - Loss at the Baden tables - Collapse of a projected Novel - Rents the reider-schloss The Knight of Gwynne. 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.

Vols. for 1871-76, 1913-14 include an extra number, The Christmas bookseller, separately paged and not included in the consecutive numbering of the regular series.