Broken to Harness A Story of Domestic English Life

Boston, MA: Loring, Publisher. Very Good-. 1866. 3rd Printing. Hardcover. American Edition. This book is in Very Good- condition and is lacking a dust jacket. The book covers have some bumping and rubbing to the spine ends and corners. The spine ends have some tiny nicks as well. The text pages are generally clean, though the front and rear endpapers are heavily toned, and have biopredation (bug nibbles). "Edmund Hodgson Yates (1831-1894) managed to offend seriously both William Makepeace Thackeray and Anthony Trollope in his work as a gossip journalist. He wrote some nineteen novels, of which this, his first, was perhaps the most popularly successful. Its most distinctive feature is its representation—sometimes fascinating but sometimes tediously knowing—of contemporary society.  “We have read it with lively interest, and we lay it aside with an agreeable sense of refreshment. ” Athenaeum, November 26, 1864. “We cannot do more than state the almost unexceptionable excellence of all these volumes contain, and add our impression of the value of the many moral lessons the author has conveyed in Broken to Harness. ” Manchester Guardian, January 17, 1865. A (slightly) contrasting view: “A spirited, effective tale of to-day, full of people one understands, who do things they are likely to do . . . With incidents which excite without being improbable”; but while the “subordinate characters” are “alive . . . The higher characters are not. ” Spectator, November 26, 1864" (from David Alfred Bywaters's Crossword Cavalcade & Fortnightly Victorian Novel Recommender). .