Judith Paris was published by Macmillan in 1931, following immediately on the success of Rogue Herries, and it is widely considered the finest volume of the Herries Chronicle. The novel follows Francis Herries’s daughter Judith from her birth (on the night of her father’s death in 1774) through the Napoleonic era, a span of about fifty years.
Judith inherits her father’s passionate nature — his wildness, his capacity for love and hate, his refusal to be tamed by convention — but she lives in a world that offers women far fewer outlets for such energies. Her life is shaped by three loves: her first husband David Doolittle Paris (a gentle farmer who gives her happiness and dies young), her lover Georges (a Frenchman who abandons her), and her second husband Adam (a solid, decent man she never fully loves). Through each relationship, Judith remains fundamentally herself — ungovernable, generous, fierce — and the tension between her nature and her circumstances gives the novel its emotional power.
The Chronicle’s dual structure becomes clear in this volume: the wild, passionate branch of the family (descended from Rogue Herries through Judith) is set against the respectable, commercial branch (the Doolittle Doolittle Herries of London and the south). This conflict — between instinct and propriety, between the Lake District and the city, between freedom and security — will drive the remaining novels.
Collecting Judith Paris
First edition (Macmillan, London, 1931): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $40–$120
- Without jacket: $8–$20