The Imagination of the Heart - Hardcover

Glover, Judith

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 031203847X ISBN 13: 9780312038472

Publisher: St Martins Pr, 1990

Synopsis

Catherine March, a foundling brought up on charity, finds herself trapped in a loveless marriage to successful merchant banker Oliver van der Kleve, until passion and heartbreak lead to a new awareness of the significance of love for both Catherine and her husband

About this title

From Library Journal:

To escape her dreary life, Catherine March, a foundling raised on charity, marries a prosperous widower nearly twice her age. Selecting Catherine for her beauty and financing her education abroad to meet his standards, Oliver van der Kleve feels pride of possession rather than love for his second wife. Catherine faces the hostility of her stepdaughter and her sister-in-law when she tries to establish a place in the household. Driven to adultery in an attempt to find love, Catherine nearly loses her wifely status until Oliver's own infidelity comes to light. Glover effectively portrays the restrictions on women in mid-19th-century England. She also chronicles the growth within a marriage of convenience from tolerance to respect to love. This is Glover's best-written novel to date; it should please her fans and win additional romance devotees to her readership. BOMC selection.
- Kathy Piehl, Mankato State Univ., Minn.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Publishers Weekly:

Catherine Marsh is a foundling raised in a charity ward, "a blank canvas in a beautiful frame," when she catches the eye of prominent merchant banker Oliver van der Kleve, a widower. Before he marries her, however, Oliver oversees her preparation for the role of mistress of his Tunbridge Wells mansion, and stepmother to his spoiled adolescent daughter. Catherine is totally unprepared for the sexually obsessive and acquisitive dimension of this calculated union, but Victorian mores provide her with no alternatives. Although she does experience an awakening and brief enchantment with an artist hired by her husband to record her beauty, Catherine also has her eyes opened to the advantages of her marriage, especially after the advent of children. Glover ( The Stallion Man ) evokes the claustrophobic ambience of distaff life at the beginning of the century, when the double standard was a given. BOMC selection.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: St Martins Pr
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 031203847X
• ISBN 13: 9780312038472
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 351