Lady Rose’s Daughter

A forgotten best seller

by Mary Augusta Ward

British novelist Mary Ward’s tenth novel, Lady Rose’s Daughter, was a sensation on both sides of the Atlantic. One source reported that the book sold as many as a hundred thousand copies in England. The Bookman crowned it the best-selling book of 1903 in the United States. But by 1916 it had fallen out of print. What does this forgotten best seller have to teach us about the world of 1903? What made this story resonate so strongly with so many readers one decade and so few the next?

This digital edition of Lady Rose’s Daughter includes a new introduction and an appendix of documents related to the novel and its author. The novel itself is annotated to provide historical context. It is part of a Lapham’s Quarterly project on forgotten best sellers. For more details and links to other parts of the project, see here.

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Introduction Appendix

Read Now

Introduction Appendix

#LadyRoseLQ

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