Eustace and Hilda

L.P. Hartley (1895–1972), the son of the director of a brickworks, attended Harrow and Balliol College, Oxford, before setting out on a career as a literary critic and writer of short stories. In 1944 he published his first novel, The Shrimp and the Anemone, the opening volume of the trilogy Eustace and Hilda. In the spring of 1952, Hartley began The Go-Between, a novel strongly rooted in his childhood. By October he had already completed the first draft, and the finished product was published in early 1953. The Go-Between became an immediate critical and popular success and has long been considered Hartley's finest book. His many other novels include Facial Justice, The Hireling, and The Love-Adept. »

Anita Brookner is an art historian and novelist. She lives in London. »

A Trilogy

By L.P. Hartley
Introduction by Anita Brookner

The three books gathered together as Eustace and Hilda explore a brother and sister's lifelong relationship. Hilda, the older child, is both self-sacrificing and domineering, as puritanical as she is gorgeous; Eustace is a gentle, dreamy, pleasure-loving boy: the two siblings could hardly be more different, but they are also deeply devoted. And yet as Eustace and Hilda grow up and seek to go their separate ways in a world of power and position, money and love, their relationship is marked by increasing pain.

L. P. Hartley's much-loved novel, the magnum opus of one of twentieth-century England's best writers, is a complex and spellbinding work: a comedy of upper-class manners; a study in the subtlest nuances of feeling; a poignant reckoning with the ironies of character and fate. Above all, it is about two people who cannot live together or apart, about the ties that bind—and break.

Read the introduction (PDF)

Reviews

The combined effect of these three books is one of mounting excellence. Eustace, the central figure, is an immortal portrayal of the delights and agonies of childhood and adolescence. I cannot but envy the author of these books. He must feel immensely satisfied to have written a social novel which is in the class of George Meredith. He is a mature and rich writer, his gift for narrative balancing nicely with his other gifts of description and dialogue.
— John Betjeman

Critics often say that literature today is in a decline ... a chief reason for my doubts is Mr. Hartley's book which in any age and by any standard is a masterpiece ... For, in spite of its sombreness, Eustace's story has charm; a complex, bittersweet charm, playful and pensive, humorous and fantastic, tender and mysterious: and touched now and again with a pathos, born of the author's sense, wistful, ironical, compassionate, of the contrast between man's immortal longings and his mortal weakness.
— Lord David Cecil

Mr. Hartley's trilogy I take to be one of the very few masterpieces in contemporary fiction.
— Walter Allen, The New Statesman

Also see:

The Go-Between
By L.P. Hartley
Introduction by Colm Tóibín

The Go-Between is a masterpiece—a richly layered, spellbinding story about past and present, naiveté and knowledge, and the mysteries of the human heart.

L. P. Hartley Set

Format: Paperback
Retail Price: $16.95
Price: $12.71 (25% off)

Aug 1, 2001
876 pages
ISBN: 0940322803
9780940322806
Literature in English
NYRB Classics

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