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Henry Kingsley wrote Stretton in 1869 after he moved to Edinburgh to take over editorship of the Daily Review, a voice of the Free Church party.
The novel tells the story of families living on Shropshire country estates and focuses on the lives of Eleanor, a landowner, and six young men.
The Shropshire lads are followed through childhood in Church Stretton and Church Pulverbatch, through college (their greatest achievements being in playing pranks and rowing) and into adulthood and four of them are caught up in the Indian mutiny.
Eleanor is a feisty, kind-hearted woman with a biting wit and is described as a 'radiant beauty'. However, she believes that being married to her 800 acre farm in Church Pulverbatch is more desirable than marriage to a man. Thus she is told when she is eighteen:
'You will never be married at this rate,' said Mrs. Evans, biting her lip.
she replies:
'Never mean to make such a fool of myself,' replied Eleanor.
It is a story of natal schemes, marital plots and inheritance intrigues, culminating in bravery and the ultimate sacrifice.
In the final third of the book, which is mostly about the Indian mutiny, the story continually jumps back to events in England.
A sample chapter of Stretton is available on this website.
The full text can also be read online or downloaded free of charge. It is in XHTML format, like this page. Please note the file size is 876kb and it may take some time to open-up if you choose to read it online. Downloading for reading later may be the preferred option and this can be typically achieved by calling up an option box. If you have a mouse and it is configured for left click to select, right clicking the link may give you this option. Link to the full text of Stretton.
Page created 19 November 2002 and last
updated 19 November 2002
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