Princess Priscilla

Sarah mentioned a book this morning that I haven’t read. I hadn’t even heard of it before today. It’s Elizabeth von Arnim’s The Princess Priscilla’s Fortnight (1905.)

Sarah is reading it on line, so I decided to do the same. I found it at online-literature.com.

The print there is small, so I copied the first chapter into a temporary Word file and blew up the type face to a readable size. And I’m finding it surprisingly easy to read this way. I’d rather be reading from paper, but the book is not easy to come by and in lieu of a paper volume this is fine.

I’ve only read the first chapter, but so far the book is quintessential von Arnim, which means delightful.

“Priscilla wanted to run away. This, I believe, is considered an awful thing to do even if you are only a housemaid or somebody's wife. If it were not considered awful, placed by the world high up on its list of Utter Unforgivablenesses, there is, I suppose, not a woman who would not at some time or other have run. She might come back, but she would surely have gone.”