The Girl from Paris

She has the unmistakable whiff of success – Violet Grant * Daily Telegraph *
In The Girl from Paris Joan Aiken blends elements of Villette, George Eliot and Thomas Hardy into a strong redemptive plot * Observer *
One of those authentic storytellers who can make you gasp * New York Times Book Review *
Aiken fans will find this a lively smorgasbord of un-frilly period entanglements, with its feminist resonances, no-nonsense tone and offbeat panache * Kirkus Reviews *
The Girl from Paris takes its heroine from an unhappy home to a pensionnat in Brussels, to the glittering home of the Comte de la Ferté in Paris. The tale has echoes of both Charlotte and Emily Brontë, but the fast-moving narrative and thoroughly modern sense of the ambiguities of character are all Miss Aiken’s own * Guardian *

Joan Aiken was born in Rye, Sussex in 1924, daughter of the American poet Conrad Aiken, and started writing herself at the age of five. From the 1960s she wrote full time and published over 100 books. Best known for her children’s books such as The Wolves of Willoughby Chase and Midnight is a Place, she also wrote extensively for adults and published many contemporary and historical novels, including sequels to novels by Jane Austen. In 1969 she won the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize for The Whispering Mountain, followed by an Edgar Allan Poe award for Night Fall in 1972, and was awarded an MBE for her services to children’s literature in 1999. Joan Aiken died in 2004.

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