About the Book Duncan believed that one of the defining aspects of modern fiction is directly related to gender: the attempt to portray a new kind of heroine, substituting an active, thinking subject for the passive, instinctual object of patriarchal fiction. In her column of October 28, 1886 in The Week, Duncan deplores the limited exalted sphere to which women are relegated as heroines of sentimental fiction and complains that such characters are simply static devices for the forwarding of the plot, "the painted pivot of a merry-go-round."
Elfrida Bell, the "daughter of today," is an attempt at a realistic picture of a career female artist of the 1890s, who rejects marriage and even love as inimical to her ideal of achievement.

About the Author Sara Jeannette Duncan
Sara Jeannette Duncan (1861-1922), a ground-breaking journalist with "The Washington Post" and "The Toronto Globe," travelled around the world with a female friend, unthinkable for women then. In India she met her husband Everard Cotes. The Brantford, Ontario-born Duncan began producing novels, plays, essays and more, including "An American Girl in London" (1891), and her best-known work, "The Imperialist" (original 1904; edited version by Thomas E. Tausky, 1996, Tecumseh).

Also by the Author A Social Departure: How Orthodocia and I Went Round the World by Ourselves (2019)
Imperialist (2008)
Cousin Cinderella (1994)
Simple Adventures of a Memsahib (1994)