12 h 4 minAudiobook11 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 12 h 4 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What does love demand when following your heart means turning against duty?
In Beatrice, H. Rider Haggard turns from adventure to the dangers of private feeling. Love cannot freely take its course. The Victorian world sets firm rules around marriage, reputation and honour, leaving those caught between duty and desire to weigh what they want against what they owe to others.
This romance explores sacrifice without making its meaning simple. What do people give up for love, and when is that giving noble, foolish, or both? Haggard brings these questions into a story told in full, rounded prose, with a narrator who pauses to reflect on events and human nature.
What you’ll discover
- Love against duty Enter a romance where deep feeling meets obligations that cannot simply be set aside.
- The weight of reputation Explore a Victorian world where marriage and honour place firm limits on personal desire.
- Sacrifice without easy answers Consider whether giving something up for love is wisdom, folly, or a painful mixture.
- Haggard in a quieter key Discover the adventure writer's attention to private feeling rather than lost cities and battles.
- Room for reflection Follow a narrator who looks beyond events to ask searching questions about human nature.
Who will love it
For readers who love Victorian romance with a moral edge, stories of strong-minded women, seaside storms, courtroom drama, and questions about faith, duty and the cost of loving someone who is not free to love you.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A canoe, a curlew and a rising tide
- A storm tests two strangers
- Rescue, a sister's plan, and a shy squire
- A marriage of cold accounts
- A dream, a debate and a proposal on the sand
- Drifting toward a love neither will name
- London, success and a hungry loneliness
- Elizabeth's plot and Geoffrey's return
- The storm, the sleepwalker and the net closes
Who’s who
- Beatrice GrangerA clever, proud schoolmistress who has lost her faith and wants a larger life than her small Welsh village allows.
- Geoffrey BinghamA rising London barrister in a loveless marriage, honest and gifted, who is drawn to the girl who saved his life.
- Lady Honoria BinghamGeoffrey's cold, elegant wife, a peer's daughter, who cares for rank, money and pleasure and little else.
- Elizabeth GrangerBeatrice's elder sister, sharp and watchful, who wants Owen Davies and his fortune for herself and envies her sister's beauty.
- Owen DaviesThe wealthy, shy squire of Bryngelly Castle, a former sailor who has loved Beatrice for years and cannot accept refusal.
- The Reverend Joseph GrangerBeatrice's father, a weak, money-minded vicar who keeps his parish on tithes and leans on his daughters.
- Effie BinghamGeoffrey's six-year-old daughter, loving and plain-spoken, who adores her father and her Auntie Beatrice.
- Old EdwardA weather-beaten Bryngelly boatman who has watched over Beatrice since she was a child and hates her canoe.
Formats and delivery
- eBook
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- Large-print eBook
- The same book in bigger, clearer type, from the first page.
- Audiobook
- 12 h 4 min, complete, read by Lucas Linden.
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas in about 11 minutes, to read or to hear.
- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Hardcover
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
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Beatrice
by H. Rider Haggard · 1890
A schoolmistress finds a barrister cut off by the tide in a thick Welsh fog and offers him a seat in her canoe.
Medium level10–20 hours to read25 languages
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In short
Beatrice is a novel by H. Rider Haggard, who died in 1925.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A canoe, a curlew and a rising tide
The story opens on Beatrice Granger's twenty-second birthday. She stands on the Dog Rocks in a gathering mist and sees her own reflection lying in the still water like her mother as she last saw her, seven years before. Shaken, she takes her canoe out into the fog and loses her bearings.
A mile or so away, on the Red Rocks, Geoffrey Bingham sits under seaweed with a gun across his knee. He is a London barrister with a dark pointed beard and a gentle mouth, and he is hunting curlew. He shoots two birds, and one falls into deep water fifty yards from the rocks, so he waits with his pipe for the tide to bring it near. While he waits for the tide to carry it in, the sea rises and cuts him off from the shore.
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What is the novel Beatrice by H. Rider Haggard about?
It follows Beatrice Granger, a Welsh schoolmistress, and Geoffrey Bingham, a married barrister whose life she saves. Their growing love is shaped by a cold marriage, a jealous sister and an obsessed suitor.
Where and when is Beatrice set?
The story takes place in the late Victorian era, mainly in the seaside village of Bryngelly on the Welsh coast and in London, where Geoffrey builds his legal and political career.
Who is Owen Davies in Beatrice?
He is the shy, wealthy squire of Bryngelly Castle, a former ship's hand who inherited a large fortune and slate quarry. He has loved Beatrice since she was a girl and presses her to marry him.
The author
H. Rider Haggard
1856–1925 · English adventure novelist
Henry Rider Haggard (1856–1925) was an English novelist. He was born in Norfolk, lived in southern Africa from 1875 to 1881, and later settled in Norfolk. He wrote King Solomon’s Mines (1885), She (1887), and Beatrice (1890). He also wrote about agriculture and rural life. He died in London.
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