Nathaniel Wright Stephenson

Eleanor Dayton Nathaniel Wright Stephenson

Hailed by a reviewer as "the kind of book that makes the reader want to consume it at a sitting," this 1903 novel by Nathaniel Wright Stephenson explores how beauty, and the loss of beauty, can profoundly affect an individual. Set in the United States, France, and England in the years surrounding the American Civil War, the book traces the life of Eleanor Dayton, an American woman of great beauty who, upon the death of her father when she was a child, is raised by her grandfather and maiden aunt, The book begins and ends with her encounters with the Emperor Napoleon, who is taken by her beauty, but the main story unfolds between those events and takes the reader through the scourge of smallpox, the Civil War, the loss of a family fortune, death in a shipwreck, and more. A contemporaneous review of the book said, "It is unusually fresh and unhackneyed, and the opening episode, which occurs in the studio of a popular painter in Paris, is dramatic and rouses an interest that is well sustained. One might almost call 'Elanor Dayton' a study in the relative values of beauty and courage as factors in life. Each character is portrayed with skill and the several episodes are handled in a dramatic fashion."This public domain work is a faithful recreation of the original text, along with a biography of the author and contemporaneous reviews.