Published in 1911, The Passionate Elopement was Compton MacKenzie’s début novel — a comic period piece set in the Georgian spa town of Bath, pastiche in the manner of eighteenth-century fiction, full of fops, gossips, love affairs, and social intrigue. MacKenzie would go on to become one of the most celebrated Scottish writers of the twentieth century, but this early work shows his wit and his deep familiarity with English literary tradition already fully formed.
Light and accomplished, it is a delightful exercise in literary pastiche. Download this free EPUB from Better Gutenberg for the complete first novel of a writer worth knowing.