Friday Reads: My Official Wife
When you find an old book with a title like ‘My Official Wife‘ for 50 cents at an op shop, how could you possibly pass it up? Even if it’s terribly battered and slightly falling apart? With that name, you just have to know what’s inside! Little did I realise when I bought it that My Official Wife was once well known. It was a bestseller when it was published in 1891, and made Savage a household name. It’s also hilariously, awesomely, terrible. My Official Wife was Richard Henry Savage’s first novel, and it draws heavily on his life. Like Savage, the ‘hero’ (more on those quote marks later), Colonel Arthur Lenox, is a retired army man. Both men had experience serving in forces all over the world, from their native US, to Egypt. Savage & Lenox both had a single child, a daughter, who married a Russian noble & government official. Colonel Lenox’s first visit to Russia to see his now-married daughter, and meet his extended family of highly-placed in-laws, precipitates the book’s action. …
