regshoe

Sounds like a good way to search Gutenberg :D

...We can ignore it, or we can remark the significance of how it (more or less explicitly) can only happen because Tom doesn't have Ned anymore. I thought that was interesting, although I certainly would have preferred a happy ending!

Oh, I'm afraid I didn't like the veiled letters at all—it hit my squick for anything that feels like mocking or taking advantage of people for not knowing or understanding something, and it felt like such a nasty trick. But you are absolutely right about the importance of Prue getting what she wants, as well as the element of equality between her and Kester—that was nice to see. (Have you read Dinah Maria Mulock Craik's Olive? —another good book about a disabled woman who eventually gets a romantic happy ending, and a lot of interesting stuff besides. It's less melodramatic than Precious Bane but, like John Halifax, very Victorian).