A Heritage and Its History (Masterplots: Revised Category Edition, British Fiction Series)
At a glance:
- Author: Ivy Compton-Burnett
- First Published: 1959
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Modernist
- Time of Work: Late Victorian period
- Setting: England
- Principal Characters: Sir Edwin Challoner, Hamish Challoner, Julia Challoner, Simon Challoner, Walter Challoner, Rhoda Graham Challoner, Hamish, Fanny Graham Challoner, Ralph, Naomi, Graham, Claude, Emma, Marcia Challoner, Deakin
- Genres: Long fiction
- Subjects: Parents and children, Nineteenth century, Mistaken or secret identity, England or English people, Upper classes, Adultery, Good and evil, Inheritance or succession, Illegitimacy, Servants
- Locales: England
Encompassing more time than any other Ivy Compton-Burnett novel, A HERITAGE AND ITS HISTORY is, in a sense, the most representative of all her novels, although it is not quite her best. The heritage, as Compton-Burnett’s readers and those who have studied their ancestors’ lives will recognize, is the complex genetic and social inheritance of what man calls good and evil tendencies. It is the virtues and the sins of the fathers that are visited upon all generations; although the current generation lives in its own day, what it does has been done by all of its forebears, as...
[The entire page is 1600 words long]
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