Timid grocer Mr. Pinner has spent years trapped in a tense, childless marriage to the beautiful, sharp-tongued Mrs. Pinner, whose looks attract the wrong kind of attention to the shop. When at last a daughter is born, he sees a miracle in her and names her Salvatia, soon Sally, only to discover that her extraordinary beauty is both blessing and curse. As Sally grows into a shy, obedient girl, her parents keep her hidden, escort her to school, and eventually move from Islington to the remote village of Woodles, hoping isolation will protect her from admirers and restore order to their lives. But Sally's radiance cannot be contained. In Woodles, young men from Cambridge begin flocking to the shop, and Mr. Pinner's fear turns to obsession until he welcomes a possible solution in Jocelyn Luke, a serious, scientific young man who falls in love with Sally at first sight. Their courtship is awkward, chaperoned, and painfully formal, with Pinner desperate to make the match respectable and Jocelyn increasingly frustrated by the lack of privacy. Around them, the story blends comedy, social unease, and quiet emotional strain, as Sally's beauty exposes class tensions, loneliness, and the desperate human need for love and control. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.

À propos de l'auteur

Arnim, Elizabeth Von

Elizabeth von Arnim, born Mary Annette Beauchamp in Australia and later raised in England, lived a cosmopolitan life that shaped her sharp, observant fiction. After marrying into German aristocracy and spending years in Europe, she drew on the pleasures and pressures of travel, marriage, social expectation, and independence to create novels that are witty, intimate, and quietly subversive. She became widely admired for her elegant prose and for her ability to turn everyday domestic life into a field of comic insight and emotional truth. Her writing often explores the tension between personal freedom and social convention, the consolations of nature, the complexity of marriage, and the inner lives of women who long for more than the roles assigned to them. These concerns still feel strikingly modern, especially in a world that continues to ask how women balance selfhood, duty, and desire. Elizabeth von Arnim’s legacy lies in her blend of humor, intelligence, and psychological acuity, which gives her work lasting freshness and relevance. Readers who enjoy finely observed social comedy, thoughtful stories about women’s lives, and novels that are both light on the surface and deep in feeling will find her especially rewarding.