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'fine scenes and piquant portraits' - The Sunday Times
England, 1928.
Lady Miranda Beauminster is placed on a stiflingly ascetic pedestal by her husband and her son.
Famous for her beauty and for being a 'silent wife', Miranda is isolated by both her social superiority and elegance.
Her husband, Earl Jervois Beauminster, is forever punishing himself for one hour of weakness: the moment when he gave into Miranda's charms before they had been pronounced Husband and Wife.
The consequence of this lapse of morality? Their dear son and heir to the peerage, Herbrand Malstrom.
Dedicated to a life time of penance, withdrawn into a religious fervour, Jervois grows distant from his wife, who exists only to care for her son.
After coming down from Eton and Oxford, Malstrom is unaware of the burden of his title and the niche he places his mother in.
As he enters London society, he attempts to steer clear of Vere Tenby, a young lady his grandmother Laura Beauminster is trying to fling towards him.
The match-making plans do not run smoothly and instead Malstrom falls into the traps of Rima, a woman more suited to be his mistress than his betrothed.
Rima, a model who sits for Andre Dorival, who has been commissioned to paint Lady Beauminster, is an ambitious opportunist.
Having glimpsed a private conversation between Dorival and Miranda, Rima finds the weapon she needs to secure her future happiness.
Miranda is stuck between the ideal the men in her life impose upon her and her true identity; will the facade fall?
When she's Dorival who's the only person in her life that challenges her and is rude to her even, she feels alive.
But how will the expectations of the Beauminster titles burden Miranda and Malstrom?
Will responsibility and duty trump love?
The Reluctant Madonna is an impressive work of literary fiction which focuses on the constraints of aristocracy, the devotion between a son and a mother and the expectations of a woman.
'Miss Steen is a superb manipulator of scene, and she makes her places as alive as her people' - Daily Telegraph
'Rich and enjoyable' - The Observer
'fine scenes and piquant portraits' - The Sunday Times
'a vivid narrative' - Manchester Guardian
'full of colour and character' - John o' London's Weekly
'rich, lavish, violent, passionate' - Evening News
Marguerite Steen (12 May 1894 - 4 August 1975) was a British writer. Very much at home among creative people, she wrote biographies of the Terrys, of her friend Hugh Walpole, of the 18th century poet and actress (and sometime mistress to the Prince of Wales) Mary 'Perdita' Robinson, and of her own lover, the artist Sir William Nicholson. Her first major success was Matador (1934), for which she drew on her love of Spain, and of bullfighting. Also a best-seller on both sides of the Atlantic was her massive saga of the slave-trade and Bristol shipping, The Sun Is My Undoing (1941). She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1951.
England, 1928.
Lady Miranda Beauminster is placed on a stiflingly ascetic pedestal by her husband and her son.
Famous for her beauty and for being a 'silent wife', Miranda is isolated by both her social superiority and elegance.
Her husband, Earl Jervois Beauminster, is forever punishing himself for one hour of weakness: the moment when he gave into Miranda's charms before they had been pronounced Husband and Wife.
The consequence of this lapse of morality? Their dear son and heir to the peerage, Herbrand Malstrom.
Dedicated to a life time of penance, withdrawn into a religious fervour, Jervois grows distant from his wife, who exists only to care for her son.
After coming down from Eton and Oxford, Malstrom is unaware of the burden of his title and the niche he places his mother in.
As he enters London society, he attempts to steer clear of Vere Tenby, a young lady his grandmother Laura Beauminster is trying to fling towards him.
The match-making plans do not run smoothly and instead Malstrom falls into the traps of Rima, a woman more suited to be his mistress than his betrothed.
Rima, a model who sits for Andre Dorival, who has been commissioned to paint Lady Beauminster, is an ambitious opportunist.
Having glimpsed a private conversation between Dorival and Miranda, Rima finds the weapon she needs to secure her future happiness.
Miranda is stuck between the ideal the men in her life impose upon her and her true identity; will the facade fall?
When she's Dorival who's the only person in her life that challenges her and is rude to her even, she feels alive.
But how will the expectations of the Beauminster titles burden Miranda and Malstrom?
Will responsibility and duty trump love?
The Reluctant Madonna is an impressive work of literary fiction which focuses on the constraints of aristocracy, the devotion between a son and a mother and the expectations of a woman.
Praise for Marguerite Steen
'Miss Steen is a superb manipulator of scene, and she makes her places as alive as her people' - Daily Telegraph
'Rich and enjoyable' - The Observer
'fine scenes and piquant portraits' - The Sunday Times
'a vivid narrative' - Manchester Guardian
'full of colour and character' - John o' London's Weekly
'rich, lavish, violent, passionate' - Evening News
Marguerite Steen (12 May 1894 - 4 August 1975) was a British writer. Very much at home among creative people, she wrote biographies of the Terrys, of her friend Hugh Walpole, of the 18th century poet and actress (and sometime mistress to the Prince of Wales) Mary 'Perdita' Robinson, and of her own lover, the artist Sir William Nicholson. Her first major success was Matador (1934), for which she drew on her love of Spain, and of bullfighting. Also a best-seller on both sides of the Atlantic was her massive saga of the slave-trade and Bristol shipping, The Sun Is My Undoing (1941). She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1951.
Used availability for Marguerite Steen's The Reluctant Madonna