Jennifer

New York: William Morrow & Company. Good. (c.1941). First Edition. Hardcover. (no dust jacket) [worn copy, moderate external soiling, light fraying at several corners, darkening to spine cloth, front hinge cracked but not split]. Historical romance set in the early 19th century, in which the eponymous heroine, the daughter of a British doctor, is moved by the poverty and social injustice she sees around her (this being the early days of the Industrial Revolution) to get involved in the movement for parliamentary reform. Unfortunately, she is unjustly accused and convicted of murder, and finds herself shipped off the Australian penal colony at Botany Bay (but not before getting herself into a secret marriage); she's then followed to Austalia both by her husband AND the guy she really loves, with subsequent complications of all sorts. A contemporary reviewer felt that the heroine's social conscience enabled the book to "somewhat transcend the limitations of sword-and-cloak romance," and further opined that if "one does not ask too much of it, and if one can accept all the extravagances of its rather gaudy plot, [the book] is a good, rousing yarn." .