O Genteel Lady! (1926) is the first novel by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Esther Forbes (who wrote the YA novel, Johnny Tremain, which many of us here in the US had to read in school).

Esther Forbes was extremely nearsighted and dsylexic and had trouble in school. She had a gift for storytelling and when a teacher encouraged her to read one of her stories before class, and she did, the teacher then accused her of plagarism (that was the last time Forbes read before class). They hired her as a typist at Harcourt publishing, but when they discovered she couldn't spell, they moved her to reading the slush pile. Forbes won an O. Henry prize for her first published story and the Pulitzer in 1942 for her biography, [Paul Revere and the World He Lived In]. (just some interesting tidbits)

I'm afraid I have abandoned this book at about page 100. Set in the mid-19th century, it's the story of a young woman who, after her mother scandalously runs off with a much younger man, escapes the wagging tongues of Amherst and a stuffy, moral financé, by running off to Boston to stay with a cousin. Boston offers a great, wide world for Lanice and she is soon doing artwork for a lady's magazine and being introduced to interesting people in the city, or who come through the city.

It's written with some wonderful domestic detail, particularly clothing, and, at least at the beginning of the book, the author seems to use the restrictiveness of the clothing, the "cage" of hoops as a metaphor for a woman's place in society. There is certainly a fair bit of well-done local detail of historical Boston...etc. I admit to skipping ahead to Chapter 10 where she is introduced to George Eliot. I'm sure the book is meant as a coming-into-her-own sort of story, as our protagonist is immature and naive when we first meet her, but I found Lanice lacking in personality and, frankly, a bit boring.

Apparently the novel was reviewed well and sold well back in 1926, but it's a bit too tame for my tastes. I've read a lot of American fiction written during the period she has set the book in and I think I prefer that to this. I think if you enjoy early 20th century literature, you might enjoy it more than I did (it's a bit jarring to go from JCO back to the gentle novel of 1926).