A Dateless Bargain (1887) is a novel by Catherine Louis Pirkis. Known for her contribution of Victorian detective fiction, Pirkis wrote over a dozen novels and countless stories throughout her brief career as a professional writer. Among them, A Dateless Bargain is an undervalued study of family, class, and trauma that will be of particular interest to scholars of English aristocracy and the rise of the women’s rights movement. At their enormous estate in Gloucestershire, Mab and Joyce—daughters of the immensely wealthy Irving Shenstone—are decorating their father’s study in anticipation of his arrival by train. With the help of their gardener, they obtain hundreds of flowers to garnish his desk and bookshelves. Amid the excitement, Mab falls asleep and has a dream where her father stands before her. Unbeknownst to the girls and their mother, Irving Shenstone disembarked from his train at five minutes to twelve, slipped while stepping onto the platform, and struck his head, dying instantly. When the news reaches them, their idyllic life is shattered in an instant, forcing Joyce and Mab to grow up long before their time. A Dateless Bargain is a novel of romance, fortune, and tragedy by a relatively unknown writer of Victorian fiction whose work deserves reassessment by readers and critics alike. This edition of Catherine Louis Pirkis’ A Dateless Bargain is a classic of Victorian English literature reimagined for modern readers.
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