Eline Vere is young, lovely, musical and surrounded by a large family in the drawing rooms of The Hague, yet a nervous melancholy keeps her from settling to anything. Engagements are made and broken, flirtations come to nothing, and as her relatives marry and move on she slides into a slow decline. Edmund Gosse introduces this translation.
Couperus’s first novel, a landmark of Dutch realism and a subtle psychological portrait. Download the free EPUB.