Front matter
Reading edition
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THE TORTOISESHELL CAT by Naomi G. Royde-Smith
“What is most conspicuous in THE TORTOISESHELL CAT is its sunlit humor. The book is more sparkling than brilliant, and quite as gentle as it is shrewd. Describing the growth to maturity of a charming girl who though adult in body has stayed adolescent in mind, it successfully insinuates the atmosphere of a time when everything is quaint and lovely and obscure, when all strangers are delightful and all events are nice.”—London Outlook.
“This is a modern novel of the deepest dye. THE TORTOISESHELL CAT is very clever, very finished, very witty, very daring. ... So entertaining that one feels, on turning the three hundredth and tenth page, that our acquaintanceship with the queer, sophisticated, cranky or merely charming people in the story has been cut short too soon. Naughty perhaps, but nice.”—London Sketch.
“It must be said to be undeniably well done. Life is here touched in with surety, candour and courage, and all through, the author keeps on her style the charm with which she endows a variety of characters.”—Aberdeen Press and Journal.
“To come upon such a novel as Miss Naomi Royde-Smith’s THE TORTOISESHELL CAT is, in comparison with the bulk of recent fiction, like having a bath after a ball.... In the characters of V. V. and Lady Winona Miss Smith has compassed successes we have not recently seen equalled.”—Liverpool Courier.
“An extremely entertaining and exciting story.”—The New Statesman.
“Its wit and humor, its pawky asides, its clever situations and sparkling dialogue demand a large constituency for this story. It is certainly the best novel we have read this year.”—The Weekly Westminster.
“She has the ease and decision in putting words and sentences together that show the born storyteller. THE TORTOISESHELL CAT will establish for her at once a host of readers clamouring for more.”—London Daily News.
“Miss Naomi Royde-Smith writes with a crisp touch and a kind of friendly gaiety; it responds with a sparkle to the humor of life but it is not afraid of the shadows. With an obvious relish for character and the freshness of quite ordinary things.”—London Times Literary Supplement.
“What cool and deliberate skill, what mastery of sheer craftsmanship.... Altogether one of the very best of recent novels.”—Bookman Journal.
THE TORTOISESHELL CAT
The Tortoiseshell Cat
A Novel By N. G. ROYDE-SMITH
Back to Lesbos, back to the hills whereunder Shone Mitylene— Unbeloved, unseen in the ebb of twilight— Purged not in Lethe. Swinburne.
NEW YORK BONI & LIVERIGHT 1925
COPYRIGHT 1925 · BY BONI & LIVERIGHT, Inc. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES.
First printing, November, 1925 Second printing, November, 1925
TO WALTER DE LA MARE