Set in Victorian England, Heartsease; Or, The Brothers Wife is the story of Violet a pretty but still naïve seventeen-year-old who is married off to the dashing officer Arthur Martindale, second son of Lord and Lady Martindale. The marriage was very much the arrangement of Violet’s social-climbing father and against the wishes of Arthur’s parents. The Martindale family consists of, in addition to Arthur and his parents, his kind but sickly older brother John and his proud sister Theodora. The family is tyrannised by Lady Martindale’s Aunt Nesbitt, a bitter elderly invalid with guile to outmatch Dicken’s Miss Haversham. Violet finds herself in an aristocratic family prejudiced against her humble origins and with a neglectful husband who expects her to bear the burden of household management for which she has little skill. With the encouragement of John, Violet finds a source of strength and comfort that enabled her to not only face her own challenges but over the following years to help the members of her new family through its own trials.

This book explores themes of faith, love, loss, class-prejudice, undergoing trials and temptations, and the wrong and right uses of privilege. Charlotte Yonge was the bestselling author of the nineteenth-century and her works deserve a long-awaited revival.

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