Before there was Monty Python, before Terry Pratchett, before there was anyone but Dickens and the Marx Brothers, A. J. Simon and Caryl Brahms, perhaps apprehensive that there'd be nothing to read during the Blitz, cooked up this wonderful comic romp. Faster than anything save Groucho's dialogue, we are pushed into Victoriana that never was, but as some happy folk hoped it might have been. Read it and laugh 'til you weep! ( )

A truly marvelous comic novel that is, as its preface notes, "not a novel set in the Victorian age: it is a novel set in its literature". Around a wisp of a plot about two feuding families and two star crossed lovers, the authors construct a panorama of the Victorian world as it was, as it was enshrined in its novels, and as it was remembered early in the 20th century. I liked this even more when I was young -- it is a young person's book, full of glitterings tours de force, names scattered about like spangles, and so on -- but still enjoyed it very much upon rereading. ( )

A light-hearted look at the Victorians as they never were but as they ought to have been. Excellent light reading. ( )