praed's

Updated: May 31, 2025

We need never be anything more. A strong bias towards analysis is the chief characteristic of Mrs. Praed's studies in character. As in her illustrations of the perplexing uncertainties of married life it is the woman's point of view that is most impressively presented, so in each story there is at least one woman whose personality stands out in pathetic relief and claims paramount attention.

Desmond Byrne - Australian Writers

Hood had the deeper and stronger genius: of this there is no doubt, and the advantage more than made up for Praed's advantages in scholarship and in social standing and accomplishment.

George Saintsbury - A History of Nineteenth Century Literature (1780-1895)

Praed's studio and the David who returned to me last summer! I can never be sufficiently thankful to Almighty God for the change He has wrought in you! No lip religion, but a change of heart. I presume you explained everything to the Colonial Office after you got back to London and that you are now free to take up a civil career? I enclose it.

Sir Harry Hamilton Johnston - Mrs. Warren's Daughter: A Story of the Woman's Movement

The heroines in nearly all of Mrs. Praed's stories have the life of sentiment and passion revealed to them by men older in years, and skilled in those small arts and graces of refined society which are ever attractive to women. But, in fulfilling this design, the men themselves are often placed in a strained and artificial pose.

Desmond Byrne - Australian Writers

'I had set you up as my hero, and my ideal, and I have found you a man. This is the summary of her life's experience, which in effect is also that of Esther Hagart, Ginevra Rolt, Christina Chard, Ina Gage, and others in the list of Mrs. Praed's unhappy heroines. Married life, as they illustrate it, is usually a compromise. Even that of Mrs. Lomax is not quite a failure.

Desmond Byrne - Australian Writers

But for inexhaustible fun that never gets flat and scarcely ever simply uproarious, for a facility and felicity in rhyme and rhythm which is almost miraculous, and for a blending of the grotesque and the terrible which, if less fine than Praed's or Hood's, is only inferior to theirs no one competent to judge and enjoy will ever go to Barham in vain.

George Saintsbury - A History of Nineteenth Century Literature (1780-1895)