The Lowest Rung: Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy

By Mary Cholmondeley

'The Lowest Rung' is a collection of essays written by Mary Cholmondeley. In it, she lays out the difficulties she faced as a female author who published under a male pseudonym. In one of the passages, she wrote: "I remember once, when I was very young and shy, how at one of my first London dinner-parties a charming elderly man discussed one of my earliest books with such appreciation that I at last remarked that I had written it myself. If I had looked for a surprised flash of delight at the fact that so much talent was palpitating in white muslin beside him, I was doomed to be disappointed. He gravely and gently said, "I know that to be untrue," and the conversation was turned to other subjects."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Good Press
• Release date: Dec 10, 2019
• ISBN: 4064066224714

Mary Cholmondeley

Mary Cholmondeley (1859-1925) was an English novelist. Born in Shropshire, Cholmondeley was raised in a devoutly religious family. When she wasn’t helping her mother at home or her father in his work as a Reverend, she devoted herself to writing stories. Her first novel, The Danvers Jewels (1887), initially appeared in serial form in Temple Bar, earning Cholmondeley a reputation as a popular British storyteller. Red Pottage (1899), considered her masterpiece, was a bestselling novel in England and the United States and has been recognized as a pioneering work of satire that considers such themes as religious hypocrisy and female sexuality.

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