Jane: A Social Incident

Summary

’Jane ’came out’ at fifty-seven and everybody knew it.’
So begins this heartwarming tale of a courteous country maid who comes into a vast inheritance, and uses it to travel into high society in London. along the way, she encounters the snobs of the society set, royalty entirely without regality, and a whole host of characters that make clear just how much better off she is away from the glitz and glamour.
Written in 1897, this tale from Marie Corelli is a short and adorably sweet take of 'a sweet-faced, placid-faced lady of the purely old-fashioned type,' inherits a fortune at 57 and discovers that the fashionable and high society world is composed of 'the Great of Purse and not the Great of Heart'.
Corelli was the the first bestselling novelist in a modern sense, dominating the scene from her debut in 1867 and largely forgotten because she wrote her social commentary, wit and style into romances that were beloved of Queen Victoria and Churchill, among many others.