Fanny Burney would not approve of some of my chapters, but it was my affection for the novels of her school, in which the heroine goes through all kinds of distresses but emerges in a sweeping triumph at the end, that made me long to try my hand at the same theme--treating it, however, in our down-to-earth twentieth-century way.
This brilliant homage to the 19th century novel begins with two young women--Lucy, sturdy and unflappable, and Daisy, charming but self-interested--performing with a theatre company in Egypt after World War I. The show closes, and Daisy stays on with a well-to-do businessman while Lucy eagerly plans her return to England. But then she falls seriously ill, then in debt to Daisy's lover. She finds that Daisy, anxious not to alienate her meal ticket, has rashly promised that Lucy will remain in Egypt and work for him until he's repaid.
Thus in Egypt they remain, over the course of nearly 20 years, while Moore's intricate, lovely plot unfolds. Frivolous Daisy, the cause of Lucy's woes, ascends the ladder of wealth while Lucy, downtrodden but diligent, slaves and toils. Misunderstandings, deceptions, and self-deceptions abound, and finally the stage is set for Lucy's "sweeping triumph", as giddy and satisfying a climax as any a 19th century master could have conceived. A Game of Snakes and Ladders may remind readers of Fanny Burney or George Eliot, or even Jane Austen, but it's always, definitively and incomparably, Doris Langley Moore. This new edition includes an introduction by Sir Roy Strong.
Moore, Doris Langley: - Doris Elizabeth Langley Moore (née Levy) was born on 23 July 1902 in Liverpool. She moved with her family to South Africa when she was eight. She received no formal education, but read widely, under the influence of her father. Moore moved to London in the early 1920s, and wrote prolifically and diversely, including Greek translation, and an etiquette manual. In 1926 she married Robert Moore, and they had one daughter, Pandora, before divorcing in 1942. She published six romantic novels between 1932 and 1959, in addition to several books on household management and an influential biography of E. Nesbit. Moore was passionately interested in clothes, and her own clothes formed the basis of a collection of costumes, to which she added important historical pieces. Her fashion museum was opened in 1955, eventually finding a permanent home in Bath in 1963. In addition to books, she also wrote a ballet, The Quest, first performed at Sadler's Wells in 1943. Moore also worked as a costume designer for the theatre and films, and designed Katharine Hepburn's dresses for The African Queen (1951). Doris Langley Moore continued to write books, with a particular emphasis on Lord Byron. Her last novel, My Caravaggio Style (1959), about the forgery of the lost Byron memoirs, was followed by three scholarly works on the poet. Doris Langley Moore was appointed OBE in 1971. She died in London in 1989.
