A Shabby Genteel Story by Thackery

[robot_mel]

This story was a short novella included in the front of my copy of Philip. It was like a hundred page long version of Vanity Fair. While the story was quite different, the style and the type of characters, and abover all the humour, were very similar. Needless to say I enjoyed it immensley. It told the tale of a woman who fell on hard times and had to open a boarding house. The main part of the story focused on two of her lodgers who fell in love with her youngest daughter. The first was "an artist and a poet" with all the mockery that should be suspected to entail. The secound was a bit of a rake, who had befriended a member of the gentry so everyone thought very highly of him. When the earl or lord (I can't remember which title he held) he was highly foppish with a terrible lisp. The book was definitly more about amusing stereotypes rather than acutal characters but it was most enjoyable. It ended in a duel and marriage. I look forward to reading the novel that follows, though with the stack of books I have to read at the moment that might be awhile.