‘Do you know anything about her, Richard?’
‘Nothing except that she lives in London, is obviously well off and very impulsive. . . . She bought the house as if it were-a bun. She bought it straight off without seeing it.’
‘She must be mad!’
The arrival of novelist Kate Hardy at the lovely Dower House in Old Quinings, with her staunch ally and housekeeper Martha, has the whole village talking. But Kate is not in fact mad, merely in need of escape from her selfish sister Milly and spoiled niece Minty. Though welcomed warmly by Richard Morven at the Manor House and the charming, widowed Mrs. Stark, Kate likewise finds herself taken for a witch and is then one of the targets of a poison pen campaign-not to mention the rumours that her new home is haunted by its past inhabitant. With the arrival of Mrs. Stark’s son Walter, back from his wartime triumphs and finding readjustment to village life difficult, Kate may find that the country allows her as little time for writing as London!
First published in 1947 and providing a fascinating glimpse of English life in the immediate postwar years, Kate Hardy is an irresistible tale of village life, challenging family relations, romance, and D.E. Stevenson’s incomparable storytelling. Also included in this edition is an autobiographical sketch by the author.
‘Miss Stevenson has her own individual and charming way of seeing things.’ Western Mail
About the author
Born in Edinburgh in 1892, Dorothy Emily Stevenson came from a distinguished Scottish family, her father being David Alan Stevenson, the lighthouse engineer, first cousin to Robert Louis Stevenson.In 1916 she married Major James Reid Peploe (nephew to the artist Samuel Peploe). After the First World War they lived near Glasgow and brought up two sons and a daughter. Dorothy wrote her first novel in the 1920’s, and by the 1930’s was a prolific bestseller, ultimately selling more than seven million books in her career. Among her many bestselling novels was the series featuring the popular ‘Mrs. Tim’, the wife of a British Army officer. The author often returned to Scotland and Scottish themes in her romantic, witty and well-observed novels.During the Second World War Dorothy Stevenson moved with her husband to Moffat in Scotland. It was here that most of her subsequent works were written. D.E. Stevenson died in Moffat in 1973.
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