16 h 19 minAudiobook14 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 16 h 19 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
Among the Tyrolean peaks, love pulls one way and duty another.
In Linnet, Grant Allen sets a Victorian romance among the mountains of the Tyrol. Love, loyalty and conscience pull against one another, while the landscape shapes the mood and the choices of those who move through it. At the centre lies a difficult question: what do we owe our hearts?
Allen brings his love of landscape and natural science to a story that rewards an easy pace. Description, conversation and small shifts of feeling make room for the conflict between desire and obligation. The pleasure lies in lingering with that tension, in a mountain world of high peaks, villages and flower-filled meadows.
What you’ll discover
- Mountains that shape choices Enter an Alpine landscape that does more than frame the love story.
- The claims of loyalty Explore what happens when love and conscience pull in different directions.
- Small shifts of feeling Linger over conversations and descriptions that give emotional uncertainty room to unfold.
- A gentler Victorian romance Settle into a formal, unhurried manner that invites attention rather than haste.
- A question worth keeping Consider where the heart's claims end and the demands of duty begin.
Who will love it
You will enjoy this book if you love Victorian romance with a comic edge, mountain settings, stories about singers, and tales where faith and feeling pull a good heart apart.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- The valley resists Florian's daydreams
- A beautiful voice attracts business plans
- Will helps Linnet find her courage
- Faith and jealousy shape Linnet's world
- Leaving quietly does not prevent pain
- A concert reveals Linnet's love
- Secret meetings open a larger world
- Hausberger turns faith into pressure
- Linnet must weigh competing claims
Who’s who
- LinnetA Zillerthal cowherd girl with a magnificent voice and a deep faith, who learns English and books and falls in love with an Englishman.
- Will DeverillAn English poet, journalist and amateur composer, kind and modest, who wants to write something great and finds himself deeply in love.
- Florian WoodA tiny, witty man about town who builds opinions from pictures, loves his own cleverness, and guides his friend with comic worldly advice.
- Andreas HausbergerThe innkeeper of St Valentin, a well-travelled, cold and shrewd man who trains singers and treats a good voice as a sound investment.
- Franz LindnerA proud young hunter and zither player who wears his feather the Robbler way and means to claim Linnet as his own.
- Rue PalmerA rich, generous American widow with a sharp mind, who admires Will's verse and wants to help him make his name.
- PhilippinaA cheerful, bold sennerin and singer from St Valentin who flirts easily and follows the troupe on its travels.
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Linnet in 25 languages, side by side, paragraph by paragraph, once the book texts are online: the way to learn a language with a book you love.
Linnet
by Grant Allen · 1898
A cowherd girl with a gift for song wins the heart of an English poet in the Tyrolean Alps.
Medium level5–10 hours to read20 languages
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“Was kost die Feder?”
In short
What happens when the place you imagined proves different from what you expected? In Linnet, a tiny English dandy named Florian Wood walks into the Zillerthal, a green valley of the Tyrol, looking for guileless peasants from a picture book.
Linnet at a glance
- Reading time
- About 9 h 20 min7 h 25 min fast, 11 h 5 min slow
- Length
- 133,500 words
- Library level
- Medium longer sentences, everyday words
- First published
- 1898by Grant Allen
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
An English dandy hunts for an imaginary Tyrol
The story opens at Zell in the Zillerthal, a green valley famous for the singers and zither players who travel the capitals of Europe. Two young Englishmen arrive on an autumn walking tour. Will Deverill is a poet and journalist who knows the mountains well. Florian Wood is tiny, graceful and so charming that London calls him by his first name alone.
Florian has never crossed the Austrian border, yet he has firm opinions about the Tyrol. He admires peasant women bent under huge baskets of fodder because the sight is picturesque. Then, at a farmhouse, he praises the Hellenic freedom of three children in mountain costume. One girl scolds her sister in pure Cockney and says her father was a waiter at the Criterion in London.
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Details
- First published
- 1898
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 10 h 35 min
- Level
- Medium level
Cite this edition
Allen, Grant. Linnet. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/linnet.
Allen, G. (2026). Linnet. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/linnet (Original work published 1898)
Allen, Grant. Linnet. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/linnet.
@book{allen2026linnet,
author = {Allen, Grant},
title = {Linnet},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/linnet},
note = {First published 1898}
}
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What is Linnet by Grant Allen about?
It follows Will Deverill, an English poet, who meets Linnet, a Tyrolean cowherd girl with a remarkable voice. Love, class, money and religion complicate her path from the Zillerthal to concert halls in Innsbruck, Meran and London.
Who is Florian Wood in Linnet?
Florian is Will's tiny, witty friend, a London man about town who loves pretty theories and is known only by his first name. He supplies much of the book's humor and sometimes pushes the plot forward.
What does it mean to be a Robbler?
A Robbler is a young Tyrolean man who wears his hat feather turned the wrong way. It signals readiness to fight; the challenge asks a feather’s price, and the answer is five fingers and a grip.
The author
Grant Allen
1848–1899 · British novelist and science writer
Grant Allen was born near Kingston, Canada, in 1848 and died in Surrey, England, in 1899. He lived in Canada, Jamaica and England. He wrote about science and evolution, as well as novels and short stories. His books include Physiological Aesthetics (1877) and the novel The Woman Who Did (1895).
“Was kost die Feder?”
More by Grant Allen
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