Beatrice

by H. Rider Haggard

First published 1890

Amazon

3.5(107)

Beatrice Granger, an independent Welsh schoolteacher, saves the life of Geoffrey Bingham when a boating accident leaves them struggling in the sea. Geoffrey is a successful barrister trapped in an unhappy marriage, and the bond formed during their rescue grows into a love neither can pursue without scandal and injury to others.

The novel follows the emotional and legal consequences of their attachment as jealousy, social convention and marital cruelty close around them. More restrained than Haggard’s adventure fiction, it is a tragic Victorian romance about conscience, sacrifice and the unequal freedoms granted to men and women.