First edition; the first two volumes comprise ‘Coming Out; a Tale of the nineteenth century’ by Anna Maria Porter, the final volume is her sister’s ‘Field of Forty Footsteps; a Tale of the seventeenth century’. ‘Either would have made a three-decker all by itself’ (Wolff).

Coming Out, like Anna Maria Porter’s earlier Honor O’Hara, takes an Irish setting. Alicia Barry, educated at home, is hoped to make her debut in London; but the family is threatened with financial ruin, and her father, a Colonel, flees to Jamaica to avoid arrest. Alicia has two rivals for her hand – the dashing Earl St. Laurence and the lowly orphan Jocelyn Hastings. The Earl is of course a cad, and has earlier seduced and abandoned an Italian maid; Hastings has better luck, and they finally marry.

The Field of Forty Footsteps is a romance set during the Commonwealth in the area that would become Bloomsbury. The main protagonists are members of Cromwell’s family. The Field in question, within Montague Fields, was a traditional location for duels.

Garside, Raven and Schöwerling 1828: 64; Loeber & Loeber P100; Wolff 5609; not in Sadleir. There were translations into French and German.

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