The Argosy

This volume of The Argosy (July-December 1888) is dominated by the serialized novel The Story of Charles Strange by Mrs. Henry Wood, author of East Lynne. In the featured chapters, protagonist Charles, a young lawyer aged twenty-five, faces romantic complications with Annabel Brightman, daughter of his deceased business partner. When Annabel's father was alive, he discouraged their courtship as premature; now he is dead and Mrs. Brightman opposes the match. Charles is simultaneously engulfed in professional crises: a missing will from client Sir Ralph Clavering has vanished from the office safe, and he learns from a newspaper report that the convict ship Vengeance carrying Tom Heriot has been wrecked with some convicts escaping. The issue features a second serialized novel, A Capriccio: A Love Story by Katherine Carr, along with numerous shorter fiction pieces, articles on salt production and tea planting, biographical essays on William Cowper, and poetry by E. Nesbit and others.