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The Keepers of the People.

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First edition of an idiosyncratic fantasy novel which, in unabashed reactionary tones, expresses unease at modernity and particularly at the emancipation of women, to the point of spurning religious morality in order to endorse male-dominated polygamy.

Jepson’s work creates a fantasy paradise in central Asia called Varandaleel which reflects the late nineteenth-century fascination with medievalism and chivalric values. The state is traditionalist and paternalistic in the extreme: Prince Ralph, the hero, summarises this in a complaint that ‘the Varandals are growing gentle... they will be inventing an alphabet soon.’

Varandaleel is a criticism of ‘the infection of the West’. Princess Agnes, Ralph’s first wife, personifies this contamination in her enthusiastic promotion of women’s emancipation, in stark contrast to the traditionalism of Varandaleel. Agnes is mocked at every turn: Varandal women have no interest in her attempts to win them a political voice, whilst she is unnatural for not wanting children, and only rejoices in her eventual pregnancy as ‘a new weapon’. The antidote to Agnes comes in two other English women, Althea and Ruth, who come to Varandaleel and fit in seamlessly. Althea endorses the patriarchal structure by stating ‘it would be no use in the world trying to train a woman to [rule]. She would break down, or alter things.’

The book climaxes with the dissolution of Ruth’s marriage because of a mutual lack of love, a critique of English law which ‘only allows divorce when the wife is unfaithful, or the husband cruel’. Jepson himself would divorce in 1933. This enables a final endorsement of polygamy, in stark contrast to contemporary English religious mores, as Ralph marries Ruth, and undertakes to marry Althea later.

OCLC records five copies, four in the UK, one in America; Library Hub records one further copy at the British Library.

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