Rhine Journey

It is 1851, only three years since Europe was convulsed by workers’ revolutions, but already English tourists are returning to the Continent, taking the waters at Baden Baden, then traveling by paddle steamer down the Rhine valley, celebrated for its romantic vistas. Among the sightseers are the pious Reverend Charles Morrison, his wife and daughter, and his maiden sister, Charlotte, a seemingly meek middle-aged woman who’s spent her life attending to the needs of others.

Like the river upon which they’re traveling, however, Charlotte contains hidden depths. A chance encounter with a fellow passenger in Coblenz sparks a Damascene moment, unleashing in her a sudden and violent awakening of memory, fear, and sexual desire. As the travelers are swept onward to Cologne, Charlotte wrestles with what Lauren Groff in her foreword to this new edition describes as “a subtle and total derangement of understanding,” eventually surging toward a moment of crisis. 

Rhine Journey is “a patient and cunning representation of the intimacies of a repressed and wasted life” (London Review of Books) by a novelist “incapable of writing a bad or inelegant sentence” (Hudson Review).

“Enchanting . . . She writes historical novels that are more advanced, more interested in feminism, for instance, than her contemporaries who write of the twentieth century . . . Ann Schlee’s wider vision is adventurous and sunlit.” 

—Jane Gardam, Slightly Foxed

“This masterful novel from Schlee (1934–2023), shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1981 following its publication in the U.K., chronicles an unmarried middle-aged woman’s repressed emotions . . . As Schlee digs toward the truth of the matter, she systematically bores through surface-level appearances to reveal the depths of her characters . . . A triumph.”

—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

“The writing in Rhine Journey is always taut and wonderful . . . graceful, economical, and emotionally acute, but, to me, the most astonishing aspect of this novel is the precision with which Schlee replicates the customs, language, and atmosphere of 1851, hewing so closely to the feeling that a book written in the early Victorian era stirs in the reader that, upon learning that Rhine Journey was only first published in 1980, I did a double take.”

—Lauren Groff, from the Foreword

“In its em­pathic evocation of period, in its un­derstanding of people enchained by piety and caste, in the bite and luminosity of its style, [Rhine Journey] is entirely mature, and a finished work of art.”

—New Yorker

“The sense of period is beautifully sustained, and we are never allowed to step outside it . . . A distinguished piece of work.”

—Graham Hough, London Review of Books

“Ann Schlee’s prose flows mellifluous and limpid as the Rhine itself.”

—Kirsty McLeod, Country Life

“A fragile, decorously-paced novella about a middle-aged Englishwoman's sudden twist for independence from her repressive relations—the surprising by-product of a tourist Rhine journey of the 1850s . . . Charlotte's fantasies, given body and voice by this mystery man's presence, throb with heartache and latent fury . . . An appealing little tale, with immaculate period ambience.”

—Kirkus, Starred Review

“Ann Schlee possesses a remarkable gift for enabling the reader to enter a past world, enlightened but unshackled by modern concepts and prejudices.”

—Isabel Raphael, The Times

“Marvelous . . . Ann Schlee has created a haunting, and fastidiously delicate and yet plainly tough story which escapes any accusation of being a pastiche Victorian piece, though its sense of time, place and tone is perfect.”

—Anthony Thwaite, The Observer

“A little period gem of feeling and clarity . . . caught in the crystal of spare sensitive writing and carrying complete authenticity.”

—Christopher Wordsworth, The Guardian

Ann Schlee was born in Connecticut in 1934 and spent parts of her childhood and adolescence in Egypt, Sudan, Khartoum, and Eritrea. She went to boarding school in England and read English at Somerville College, Oxford. In 1957 she married artist Nick Schlee, brought up their four children, and wrote five children’s novels, including The Vandal, which won the 1980 Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize. Rhine Journey, the first of her novels for adults, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1981.  Subsequently she combined her writing with teaching, becoming a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1997.

Lauren Groff is the author of seven books, most recently The Vaster Wilds, Matrix, and Florida. She lives in Gainesville, Florida. 

Rhine Journey • Paperback ISBN: 9781961341098

Jul 16, 2024 • McNALLY EDITIONS no. 30

5" x 8.5" • 208 pages • $18.00

eBook ISBN: 9781961341104