Lower than Vermin
 1950 dustjacket | |
| Author | Dornford Yates |
|---|---|
| Genre | Novel |
| Publisher | Ward Lock & Co[1] |
Publication date | 1950[1] |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 324[1] |
Lower than Vermin is a 1950 novel by the English author Dornford Yates (Cecil William Mercer).
Plot[]
The book deals with the history of a noble family from about the time of Victoria's Diamond Jubilee until after the Second World War, much of it related by the governess, Miss Carson.
Background[]
Mercer was very much not in sympathy with the new post-war order, and having received many letters from readers asking him to write again of the ‘old days’ he once again returned to his preferred period with this novel.[2] He wrote to a correspondent, “What we used to call the nobility and gentry of England have been so monstrously misaligned and misrepresented for so long that I felt it was only right that some author of standing should present a true picture of them and their habits and manners before it was too late".[3]
Critical reception[]
Mercer’s autobiographer AJ Smithers acknowledged “Mercer's mild obsession with the kind of people whom he ranked only a little lower than the angels.”[3] He noted that the author’s ideas had been formed well before 1914 and they were never mitigated. By the time Mercer was thirty he “had seen a good cross-section of the gentry of England and ... he preserved it like a fly in amber.”[4]
The book was not a great success, appearing to a new generation of post-war readers to be a caricature completely divorced from present reality.[3]
References[]
- ^ a b c "British Library Item details". primocat.bl.uk. Retrieved 16 May 2020.
- ^ Smithers 1982, p. 212.
- ^ a b c Smithers 1982, p. 214.
- ^ Smithers 1982, p. 215.
Bibliography[]
- Smithers, AJ (1982). Dornford Yates. London: Hodder and Stoughton. ISBN 0 340 27547 2.
- 1950 British novels
- Ward, Lock & Co. books
- Novels by Dornford Yates