Cousin Phillis

Summary

A rural young Englishwoman experiences her first love with a worldly engineer in this tale from the beloved author of Cranford and Wives and Daughters.

Setting and Characters

It is the 1840s in England, and the time has come for nineteen-year-old Paul Manning to make his own way in the world. He takes a position working for Edward Holdsworth, an engineer overseeing expansion of a railway line into the countryside. Paul''s work also takes him to Hope Farm and his relatives, the Holmans—his mother''s cousin, her minister husband, and their daughter, the tall and beautiful seventeen-year-old Phillis.

Plot

Paul bonds with Holmans and soon brings his boss to the farm. A quasi-love triangle begins to blossom, and innocent Phillis''s world soon transforms . . .

Publication

Originally published in four parts in The Cornhill Magazine from 1863 to 1864, Cousin Phillis is a Victorian novella that captures young people coming of age in a changing nation and a changing world.