Adrian Savage: A Novel

"Adrian Savage: A Novel" by Lucas Malet is a fictional narrative written in the early 20th century. The novel introduces Adrian Savage, a young man with artistic ambitions, as he navigates love, loss, and societal expectations in Paris. The story unfolds against a backdrop of vivid character interactions and Adrian's emotional landscape, which is marked by his feelings for Gabrielle St. Leger, a woman of enigmatic beauty and complex history. At the start of the novel, readers meet Adrian Savage as he prepares for a difficult farewell to Gabrielle St. Leger, with whom he shares a romantic connection. The setting is a chilly winter in Paris, emphasizing the emotional turmoil Adrian faces as he grapples with his unexpected departure and a sense of foreboding about the future. As he arrives at Gabrielle's home, he senses the weight of their relationship, noting the tensions and lingering insecurities that complicate their interactions. The chapter captures the intricacies of love and desire, as well as the challenges that arise when navigating personal ambitions against the backdrop of human relationships, foreshadowing the conflicts and developments that will unfold in their lives. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Lucas Malet was the pseudonym of Mary St Leger Kingsley, a Victorian novelist. Of her novels, The Wages of Sin (1891) and The History of Sir Richard Calmady (1901) were especially popular. Malet scholar Talia Schaffer notes that she was "widely regarded as one of the premier writers of fiction in the English-speaking world" at the height of her career, but her reputation declined by the end of her life and today she is rarely read or studied. At the height of her popularity she was "compared favorably to Thomas Hardy, and Henry James, with sales rivaling Rudyard Kipling." Malet's fin de siecle novels offer "detailed, sensitive investigations of the psychology of masochism, perverse desires, unconventional gender roles, and the body."