5 h 50 minAudiobook7 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if the woman of your dreams is a dream no real person can match?
Richard Lancelyn carries a picture of the perfect woman in his mind. Ordinary pleasures cannot satisfy this young poet, so he sets out to seek his Golden Girl. In Richard Le Gallienne’s The Quest of the Golden Girl, longing becomes a journey from place to place, meeting to meeting.
Along the road come landscapes, weather, inns and company, all described with affection and gentle humour. The search also raises a question: can Lancelyn love an ideal and a real person at the same time? This romance lets longing lead, while its playful narrator pauses to comment, joke and sigh with the reader.
What you’ll discover
- A dream worth pursuing Follow a young poet whose imagined perfect companion makes ordinary life feel incomplete.
- The pleasures of wandering Travel through landscapes and inns where encounters give the search its light, affectionate character.
- Love beyond an ideal Explore the tension between wanting perfection and loving a person rather than a dream.
- A narrator with humour Enjoy a companionable voice that steps aside to share a joke or a sigh.
- Prose with a musical turn Linger over poetic, ornamental sentences that make room for longing as well as laughter.
Who will love it
For readers who love wandering through old England, playful talk straight to the reader, quotations from the poets, and love stories told with a smile and a sigh. It suits anyone who has dreamed of the perfect partner.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A lonely bachelor sets out on a whim
- The perfect woman is a charming imperfection
- Old stories of love line the road
- A bought petticoat gives the quest a goal
- Youth and age see love from different sides
- A trout leads to Nicolete and her wish
- He lets Nicolete go and asks for a wiser love
- Books bring two strangers close
- What the book is about and how it is told
Who’s who
- The narratorA bookish bachelor of thirty who leaves his empty house to walk through England in search of the Golden Girl, the wife meant for him.
- NicoleteA rich, bookish girl of twenty who dresses as a boy and joins the narrator's walk for a fortnight of freedom.
- RosalindA cheerful young wife who misses her husband after their modern experiment in being apart and sets out to find him.
- OrlandoRosalind's young husband, who goes off for his month of freedom and drifts into trouble at the seaside resort.
- Sylvia JoyA famous dancer whose lace petticoat gives the narrator his quest and who keeps her own mind about marriage.
- AlastorA twenty-year-old clerk and poet who has lost his green Shelley and believes in pure and perfect love.
- The woman of the moorA tall stranger with violet eyes whom the narrator sees once on a bleak road and cannot forget.
Formats and delivery
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- Large-print eBook
- The same book in bigger, clearer type, from the first page.
- Audiobook
- 5 h 50 min, complete, read by Lucas Linden.
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas in about 7 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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La búsqueda de la Chica Dorada
by Richard Le Gallienne · 1896
A thirty-year-old bachelor searching for a wife buys a stranger's petticoat and decides to find the woman who wore it.
Medium level5–10 hours to read25 languages
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In short
What if a man set out on foot to find a wife, then bought a stranger's petticoat to guide his search? Richard Le Gallienne tells that story in The Quest of the Golden Girl, the tale of a lonely bachelor of thirty who walks out of his front door one spring morning.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A lonely bachelor sets out on a whim
The story opens when the narrator turns thirty and finds his house too quiet. His sister Margaret has married and gone on her honeymoon, and the piano, the garden and the books no longer comfort him. So he decides to take a staff and a knapsack, walk out of his gate and look for the Golden Girl, the perfect wife he has never met.
He knows the plan is absurd, and he says so. Spring, he argues, is a mad piper who promises everything and keeps nothing, yet he follows the music like everyone else. He eats sandwiches in a hollow, drinks sherry, and falls asleep. In his dream a dryad rises from an oak and asks whom he seeks, then sends him to a woven hut where a sleeping girl waits.
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What is The Quest of the Golden Girl about?
A lonely bachelor of thirty leaves home to walk through England in search of the perfect wife. Along the way he meets several women, gets caught up in other people's love affairs, and finally learns what he was looking for.
Who is the Golden Girl in the book?
She is the narrator's dream of the ideal woman, the one he feels he will know when he sees her. His encounters test what he means by that dream.
Why does the narrator carry a petticoat?
He buys a petticoat from a cottage clothesline and reads a name on its waistband, Sylvia Joy. Like the prince with Cinderella's slipper, he decides to find the owner, which gives his wandering quest a goal.
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