St. Elmo

Reading time: about 13 h
Length: 178,944 words · 624 pages
Structure: 37 chapters · 1 front-matter section
Language: English
Era: Victorian

Edna Earl, orphaned and penniless, is taken into the house of Mrs Murray, whose son St. Elmo came back from abroad years ago cynical, blasphemous and rumoured to have killed a man in a duel. Edna educates herself ferociously — Greek, Hebrew, Chaldee, comparative mythology — refuses to be patronised, becomes a successful author, and refuses St. Elmo as well, on the grounds that his soul is in no condition to be married to. The novel's business is what he does about that.

Augusta J. Evans published St. Elmo in 1866, and it became one of the great American sellers of the century: towns, hotels, steamboats, a cigar and a great many children were named after it. Its learning is deliberately displayed, and the parodies began almost at once.

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