Mignon's Message: White Tree Publishing Edition

By Eliza Kerr

Mignon Massey is devastated when she has to leave her lovely home in Tuscany and move to England to live with her uncle and his family. Her fear, that she will not be welcome, is soon realized. In England she is determined to live out her strong Christian faith, in the face of hostility and misunderstanding, by her actions rather than her words. An elderly neighbour Mignon rescues in a storm becomes her only friend, although the young owner of a local farm seems to be taking an interest in the newcomer from Italy. Originally published for younger readers, this is a story that will be enjoyed by all ages.

• Language: English
• Publisher: White Tree Publishing
• Release date: Oct 7, 2019
• ISBN: 9781912529476

Book preview

About the Book

Mignon Massey is devastated when she has to leave her lovely home in Tuscany and move to England to live with her uncle and his family. Her fear, that she will not be welcome, is soon realized. In England she is determined to live out her strong Christian faith, in the face of hostility and misunderstanding, by her actions rather than her words. An elderly neighbour Mignon rescues in a storm becomes her only friend, although the young owner of a local farm seems to be taking an interest in the newcomer from Italy. Originally published for younger readers, this is a story that will be enjoyed by all ages.

Mignon’s Message

by

Eliza Kerr

White Tree Publishing Edition

Original book first published 1888

This White Tree Publishing edition ©White Tree Publishing 2019

eBook ISBN: 978-1-912529-47-6

Published by

White Tree Publishing

Bristol

UNITED KINGDOM

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Mignon’s Message is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the copyright owner of this abridged edition.

Table of Contents

Cover

About the Book

About Victorian Christian Authors

Publisher’s Note

1. Mignon’s Dream

2. Graylands

3. One Day after Another

4. A Visit to Glynncote

5. Mr. Glynn’s Tenant

6. Mignon’s Message

7. Disaster

8. Mignon’s Dream Realized

About White Tree Publishing

More Books from White Tree Publishing

Christian non-fiction

Christian Fiction

Books for Younger Readers

About Victorian Christian Authors

There were many prolific Christian authors in the last part of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth. The majority of their books were fairly heavy-handed moral tales and warnings to young people, rather than romances. Two writers spring to mind who wrote romantic fiction for adults ‒ Mrs. O. F. Walton and Margaret S. Haycraft, whose works are still popular today. Our White Tree Publishing editions from these authors have been sensitively abridged and edited to make them much more acceptable to today's general readers, rather than publishing them unedited for students of Victorian prose. The characters and storyline are always left intact.

Eliza Kerr is less well known today than Mrs. Walton and Margaret Haycraft, but she wrote similar books, but with perhaps less emphasis on romance, but in a similar style to the books of Walton and Haycraft, and we welcome many of Eliza Kerr’s book to our catalogue.

Victorian and early twentieth century books by both Christian and secular writers can be over-sentimental, referring throughout, for example, to a mother as the dear, sweet mother, and a child as the darling little child with beautiful curls. In our abridged editions overindulgent descriptions of people have been shortened to make a more robust story, but the storylines are always unchanged.

A problem with Victorian writers was the tendency to insert intrusive comments concerning what is going to happen later in the story. Today we call them spoilers. They are usually along the lines of: Little did he/she know that.... I have removed these when appropriate, although the occasional hint does not always come amiss. The authors also inserted their own comments on the morality or otherwise of the characters’ behaviour.

£1000 in the late 1800s may not sound much, but in income value it is worth about £120,000 pounds today (about US $150,000). I explain this in case the mention of money in this book sounds insignificant!

Astute readers of Eliza Kerr’s books will notice a similarity between this book (1888) and her much longer Rollica Reed (1891), where the concept of an unwelcome family intruder has been considerably lengthened for older readers, with many more twists to the plot. A contemporary reviewer of Rollica Reed, who must have led a very sheltered life, wrote that no family would ever behave like that! Many readers would beg to differ.

The poem Sunrise Hills of Galilee in Chapter 1 is from The Tulip Tree and Other Poems by Robert J. Kerr, first published 1906 in Dublin. Eliza Kerr was also Irish, but I have been unable to discover if there is a close family connection. Bearing in mind the much later date for the publication of the poems, it is likely there is a least a family connection. In two book reviews dated 1881 and 1882, Eliza is referred to as Miss Kerr. So Robert J. Kerr could have been her father or brother, which is why she was able to use the poem here, eighteen years before it was published in The Tulip Tree and Other Poems. The whole poetry book is available in various formats on the internet, some free. If anyone has definite details on this Eliza Kerr’s family ‒ beware, there are many people with her name from that period on Google ‒ please make contact through this publisher’s email address. These details can then be added to the Introductions to all White Tree Publishing’s editions of Eliza Kerr’s books.

Chris Wright

Editor

Publisher’s Note

There are only 8 chapters in this short book. In the second half are advertisements for many of our other books, so the story may end earlier than expected! The last chapter is marked as such. We aim to make our eBooks free or for a nominal cost, and we cannot