Devereux : a tale : manuscript

Original holograph manuscript in her extraordinarily neat and barely corrected hand, consisting of title-page, dedication, two pages, to her cousin Miss Anna Dennis, introduction, two pages, contents page, 264 pages text, comprising chapters X to XXII. Small pencil sketch of a seated woman on blank opposite title (probably a self-portrait).

The introduction to the author's posthumously published journal refers to and illustrated her "printing hand, varying but little from first to last" and explains that the journal was "written impromptu, without a rough draft, in the midst of as busy a life as ever a young creature had." Another novel by Margaret Emily Shore The Emigrants' Tale is mentioned on the title-page of Devereux.

Neither novel seems ever to have been published and indeed they seem scarcely known of. Devereux is "the tale of a precocious boy, who escapes from his home, turns pirate, and redeems a career of crime by one act of splendid and pathetic self=sacrifice." The introduction to the journal states that the author "had neither read nor heard of Trelawney's 'Adventures of a Younger Son' when she wrote it. Both these works show book-knowledge of other countries, an eye for localities, and skill in describing nature. The printed manuscript of Devereux is perhaps, the most beautifully executed of all her works; it is, in fact, perfect.'"

The chapter headings are as follows: The Island; The Captive; Sorcery; Double-Dealing; The Schooner; The Familiar Spirit; Wooing in Paris; Superstitions; Assassination; The Day of Departure; The Deserted; Wanderlings; and Slavery.

There are a few poems and fragments reproduced at the end of the published journal. Those aside, the present manuscript is presumably the only known surviving example of the author's fictional prose.

In her introduction to the novel the author states that she will in all likelihood not finish Devereux, and it seems clear that a third volume was never written. She also points out that it is considerably longer than the first volume, that what little time she could give to it was "snatched from the evening hours, when the conclusion of a day of mental labour at a time when my health was too weak to sustain it without excessive fatigue had left me pretty well exhausted both in mind and body" and that "the story...is highly improbably, but to the merit of skillfully interweaving incident and adventure I make no pretension...My aim has been rather to depict feelings and passions, to penetrate into the workings of the human heart, and to rouse up the deep sympathies of our nature."

Written so soon before her untimely death, the poignancy of her conclusion is almost unbearable: "I have nothing more to say to you, Reader, except that as you are not likely to be any one out of the circle of my relations, to whom I might have explained all this more shortly by word of mouth, I have to beg your pardon for giving the trouble of reading the above, in which after all I do not know that there is anything worth my asking you to read."

Fortunately, this volume has survived and perhaps now can be made available to a readership the author would never have anticipated.