Late Victorian and Early Modernist Women Writers

Sir Richard Calmady (1901) was lauded as the greatest work of fiction in its day, but it was also attacked by outraged readers. This ambitious novel, written in a richly aesthetic style, describes the psychological growth and sexual adventures of a disabled man as he attempts to compensate for his bodily self-hatred.

Like Frankenstein, Calmady explores the emotional state of a man who believes he is monstrous. Richard must cope with his somewhat incestuous closeness to his mother, his overwhelming desire for his seductive, heartless cousin Helen, and his complex feelings for his lesbian feminist socialist cousin Honoria. In turn, Richard's physical state evokes the various needs, fears and fantasies of these women.

Their story sweeps across turbulent 1870s Europe, including industrial slums, magnificent estates, opera, fever epidemics, and the Franco-Prussian war. The novel also achieves grandeur by evoking elemental religious and literary narratives. Sir Richard Calmady explores gender roles and sexual behaviour that broke the bounds of what was permissible for the Victorian novel. In Sir Richard Calmady, Malet wrote one of the most beautiful yet daring novels of the turn of the century.