Catherine Carter once again raises the question of the historical and the "period" novel. Where does the one end and the other begin? One thinks of a "period" novel as an artificial, impressionistic potboiler and the majority are little better than that. Indeed, Miss Hansford Johnson's book bears signs of the atmospheric writing that we associate with the film script. Yet, long before we have finished this 460-page evocation of the Victorian theatre we realise that this book is far from being a potboiler. It is, rather, a clever writer's purple indiscretion. Miss Hansford Johnson is an accomplished novelist who has surrendered to the impulse to hurl her creative bonnet over the windmill. Her gaslit heroine and twopence-coloured background lie outside the diocese of the critical conscience and one must read her book in the spirit in which she appears to have written it. Certainly, it is an...