The Sundered Streams : the history of a memory that had no full stops / by Reginald Farrer.

 PR 6011 .A775 S8 1907. [4], 399, [1], 16 p. ; 20 cm.  Listed as 1st edition by bookseller.  Publisher's catalogue, dated January, 1907: p. 1-16 at end.  Bound in original black cloth with title in gilt and red compartment on upper cover. Lettering stamped in gilt on spine. Digital donation by Laura Blanchard, November 2017. 

 

Summary:

 

Set in London and on the Yorkshire moors, The Sundered Streams  is the story of the struggle of Kingston Darnley to resolve the conflict between his duty to his dull but dependable wife Gundrun and his passionate attraction to her cousin Isabel. Darnley’s and Isabel’s mounting attraction reaches its pinnacle when Isabel tells him that their souls have been bound together and are fated to remain linked for all eternity. Darnley's conflicted feelings and Gundrun’s mounting jealousy toward a dimly-perceived rival combine to bring about tragedy in the concluding chapter. Reginald Farrer (1880-1920) was a celebrated garden writer and plant hunter, a convert to Buddhism who succumbed to illness in upper Burma on a collecting expedition. The novel reflects his Buddhist beliefs, his passion for the novels of Jane Austen, and his love for his native Yorkshire moors.