The Heavenly Twins

1893. Frances Bellenden Clarke was born in Ireland. She married a widowed army surgeon, Chambers McFall, with whom she had one son. They traveled extensively in the Far East. As a New Woman novelist, she became a leading figure in late nineteenth-century feminism of social and moral purity. In 1890 she left her husband, who did not support her ideas and in 1893 she changed her name to Madame Sarah Grand. That year Heinemann published The Heavenly Twins, which immediately became a controversial bestseller in England and the United States. This triple-decker novel in deploring sexual ignorance and hypocrisy in marriage gave a disturbing depiction of a syphilitic wife and baby. The eponymous twins, Angelica and Diablo, served to question gender roles; The Tenor and the Boy is a cross-dressing episode. Contents: Childhoods and Girlhoods; A Maltese Miscellany; Development and Arrest of Development; The Tenor and the Boy-An Interlude; Mrs. Kilroy of Ilverthorpe; and The Impressions of Dr. Galbraith. Due to the age and scarcity of the original we reproduced, some pages may be spotty, faded or difficult to read.