I had seen the Merchant Ivory film & only read this because it was the only reasonable looking fiction on a very limited book-exchange shelf. Lucky me!

This original story has a different plot from the film, giving Lucy Honeybourne far more intelligence as she grows up being exposed to people outside her restricted world. The characters so well drawn, with all their foibles. I understand, now, the desire of the well-educated middle-aged, middle class to instruct the young in this sort of "great literature" - but it would have been futile to impose it on me in my youth!! I simply would not have understood.