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landofnowhereFor the last two weeks I've been in a state of "I really need to work on these paper revisions", which, being who I am, means that I have been coming up with all sorts of ways to procrastinate. Which is not a very good excuse for not posting last week, when I should have told you about the awesomeness of Una Silberrad, and in the past week I have been procrastinating by other means than reading; so I should still write up these books even though they are less fresh in my mind.
Una Silberrad was a popular early 20th century British novelist; like many popular women writers of the time, her books, though in the public domain, are hard to find electronic copies of. I first heard of her from Jo Walton's reading posts on Reactor. A friend of mine is involved with the process of getting her books into project Gutenberg -- in fact we became friends after I messaged her and said "hey, it would be great if someone did this for Edith Ayrton Zangwill, too", and she volunteered to do this, without having read anything of Edith's, just on a Discord friend-of-a-friend's suggestion!
Princess Puck, Una Silberrad. This book just made it to Project Gutenberg, thanks to my friend's efforts. This is a really charming coming-of-age story, with a girl who comes of age and ultimately gets to save the day with her interest in family/local history and her strength of purpose to do what is right. (I think the protagonist maybe could be read as having autistic spectrum traits, in particular her talent for mimicry, but it's unclear.) There is a romance, but this is the sort of story where you feel like the protagonist would have had a meaningful life even if the plot contrivances hadn't arranged to make the romance work out in the end. Reminded me a bit of The Secret Garden, with its combination of romantic tropes and groundedness in everyday work. Of the supporting characters, I particularly liked the protagonist's business-minded older cousin, and how the relationship between the two develops over time.
The Good Comrade, Una Silberrad. This is the only other fiction book of Silberrad's on Gutenberg so far (but this will change soon!) -- it was Silberrad's mos popular novel, and I can see why. This fits the conventional structure of a romance novel much better than Princess Puck, but it goes some really interesting places (Holland, and horticulture) first. Julia is a very resourceful heroine; she has the key Una Silberrad heroine traits of valuing hard work and not caring too much for social norms and class distinctions, but is also very much herself, and shaped by her family circumstances (her father is an alcoholic and gambler, her mother is a professional at keeping up appearances).
Desire, Una Silberrad. This one is not yet on Gutenberg, but was particularly recommended to me. This one has two protagonists; the titular Desire, a wealthy and alluring young socialite, and Peter, an aspiring young writer from a middle-class background. Again the ending is conventional, but the way it gets there is not. (Early in the plot there's some fake dating, but it's not at all used in a tropey way.) Desire starts out being not entirely likeable as a character, but I liked her arc.
Una Silberrad was a popular early 20th century British novelist; like many popular women writers of the time, her books, though in the public domain, are hard to find electronic copies of. I first heard of her from Jo Walton's reading posts on Reactor. A friend of mine is involved with the process of getting her books into project Gutenberg -- in fact we became friends after I messaged her and said "hey, it would be great if someone did this for Edith Ayrton Zangwill, too", and she volunteered to do this, without having read anything of Edith's, just on a Discord friend-of-a-friend's suggestion!
Princess Puck, Una Silberrad. This book just made it to Project Gutenberg, thanks to my friend's efforts. This is a really charming coming-of-age story, with a girl who comes of age and ultimately gets to save the day with her interest in family/local history and her strength of purpose to do what is right. (I think the protagonist maybe could be read as having autistic spectrum traits, in particular her talent for mimicry, but it's unclear.) There is a romance, but this is the sort of story where you feel like the protagonist would have had a meaningful life even if the plot contrivances hadn't arranged to make the romance work out in the end. Reminded me a bit of The Secret Garden, with its combination of romantic tropes and groundedness in everyday work. Of the supporting characters, I particularly liked the protagonist's business-minded older cousin, and how the relationship between the two develops over time.
The Good Comrade, Una Silberrad. This is the only other fiction book of Silberrad's on Gutenberg so far (but this will change soon!) -- it was Silberrad's mos popular novel, and I can see why. This fits the conventional structure of a romance novel much better than Princess Puck, but it goes some really interesting places (Holland, and horticulture) first. Julia is a very resourceful heroine; she has the key Una Silberrad heroine traits of valuing hard work and not caring too much for social norms and class distinctions, but is also very much herself, and shaped by her family circumstances (her father is an alcoholic and gambler, her mother is a professional at keeping up appearances).
Desire, Una Silberrad. This one is not yet on Gutenberg, but was particularly recommended to me. This one has two protagonists; the titular Desire, a wealthy and alluring young socialite, and Peter, an aspiring young writer from a middle-class background. Again the ending is conventional, but the way it gets there is not. (Early in the plot there's some fake dating, but it's not at all used in a tropey way.) Desire starts out being not entirely likeable as a character, but I liked her arc.
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Date: 16 Oct 2025 20:52 (UTC)Oh wow, Una Silberrad! The only work of hers I have read (and loved!) is The Book of Sanchia Stapleton. I have had a plan on the back burner for a few years now to make it into an electronic text for Project Gutenberg, but the scan I have is too distorted for decent OCR. I really did not expect to hear that someone else was working on digitising Silberrad's books. So cool! I don't suppose you know if The Book of Sanchia Stapleton is among their plans?
In the meantime, I'm off to read Princess Puck and The Good Comrade :)
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Date: 16 Oct 2025 22:45 (UTC)Enjoy the books!
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Date: 16 Oct 2025 23:53 (UTC)Yes, I do have Sanchia Stapleton on my list - I have obtained copyright clearance from Project Gutenberg, and Jo Walton kindly loaned me her copy of the book to scan. I expect I'll get the book up on Distributed Proofreaders within the next few months and it will start going through the rounds of proofreading, formatting and post-processing (which can take quite a while, admittedly, but I hope we'll see it on Project Gutenberg within a year or so). Fortunately, Una Silberrad's work is about to come into the public domain in the UK on January 1, 2026, so I've been wondering if we might see more of her work getting attention and a broader audience as a result.
Another one of "my" Silberrad books, "Success", is currently in the final stages at DP, and should be going live on the site within the next few weeks. (Unlike the books mentioned in this blog post, it is *not* a marriage plot book, but it has all of the classic Silberrad elements; she writes really interesting, sensitive male characters, and one of the two MCs of "Success" is one of my favourite so far. So you may want to keep an eye out for that one, too!)
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Date: 17 Oct 2025 05:47 (UTC)If you are interested, here is a fic I wrote for it.
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Date: 17 Oct 2025 12:19 (UTC)I have scanned and OCRed a couple of Silberrad's other historical novels, and would be very happy to pass along a rough (but tidied up and very readable!) txt or epub if folks are keen to read these books soon instead of waiting until they eventually wind up on Project Gutenberg.
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Date: 26 Oct 2025 12:06 (UTC)Hmm, what other historical novels did she write? I mean, the books that are set in her own time are historicals for us now, but did she write more books that were historicals for her?
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Date: 26 Oct 2025 14:46 (UTC)no subject
Date: 17 Oct 2025 11:00 (UTC)These books sound great.
It's astonishing how many books we've lost access to, and I applaud all efforts to preserve and make accessible that writing.
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Date: 18 Oct 2025 02:06 (UTC)Yes; it's impressive both how many books we've digitized and how many books there are out there that we haven't.
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Date: 18 Oct 2025 12:27 (UTC)no subject
Date: 17 Oct 2025 13:46 (UTC)I love hearing about obscure women writers from you <3
sending you good vibes for the revisions
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Date: 18 Oct 2025 02:11 (UTC)I ended up on dreamwidth because I love reading the book reviews here, so I'm glad to contribute to other peoples' enjoyment.
Thanks!
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Date: 18 Oct 2025 12:46 (UTC)