Marya reviewed The lamplighter by Maria Susanna Cummins (The American women writers series)
Review of 'The lamplighter' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
I can see why this was a bestseller! Lots of reversal of fortune, mistaken identity, deathbed repentance, and so on, very page-turning. If you hate pious books it will annoy you, but as someone who likes Charlotte Yonge et al, it's pretty low on the gratuitous churchiness scale. There is a lot of good nasty class-based family drama, and some romances, even a satisfying boat accident, and it's interesting to get an American version of the plots you find in popular Victorian fiction with the educational concerns and the rich but judgy relatives and the European tour and so on, long before James and Wharton got there. (The writing is nowhere near them, though.)
The love interest is regrettably unable to speak without going on for a page and a half at a time. Our otherwise sensible heroine should have rejected him on that account.