Julia de Roubigné

by Henry MacKenzie

Henry Mackenzie's third and last novel was one of the better-known works to emerge in the wake of Rousseau's Julie, ou la nouvelle Heloise, at the end of the eighteenth century, but it is no mere copy of its influential forbear.
In the introduction to this new edition of a novel immediately popular with contemporaries but neglected by twentieth-century readers, Susan Manning argues that this final fiction of the author of The Man of Feeling represents not the dying gasp of the literature of sentiment, but an experiment which, in searching the psychological bankruptcies of sensibility, charts new ground in the fictional representation of emotional disturbance. MacKenzie's challenging use of the epistolary form subtly traces the processes by which a mind comes to disorder; the novel's melodramatic climax ceases to gesture back towards Rousseau and the world of virtuous sensibility, and points instead towards the self-alienation and disintegration explored in later Scottish masterpieces such as James Hogg's Confessions of a Justified Sinner or J. MacDougall Hay's Gillespie.

Genres: Fiction, 18th Century

164 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1777

About the author

There is more than one Henry Mackenzie in the Goodreads catalog. This entry is for Henry ^ Mackenzie, Scottish lawyer.

Henry Mackenzie FRSE was a Scottish lawyer, novelist and writer. He was also known by the sobriquet "Addison of the North." While Mackenzie is now mostly remembered as an author, his principal income came from legal roles, ending in (1804–1831) his post as Comptroller of Taxes for Scotland, a well-paid post which allowed him to indulge his interest in writing.

Reviews

[Grace Harwood · Rating 5 out of 5]

I stumbled across this book as Charlotte Smith mentions it in her 1796 novel, Marchmont, so thought I'd better read it in the name of research. It's a wonderful book and I can see why Smith was taken with it. The story is as follows: the eponymous heroine is the only daughter of a previously rich father and mother who have since lost all their money (due to legal chicane - something Smith was very familiar with). On the verge of being flung into debtor's prison, Julia's father is saved by the proud, rich Spaniard, Montauban. Reluctantly (because she is in love with her childhood sweetheart, Savillon) and only because she believes Savillon married, she agrees to marry Montauban - more out of gratitude than anything, for saving her father. However, what do you know? Volume II reveals that Savillon is NOT married after all and still in love with Julia. There follows a bit of soul searching as to whether the married Julia should meet her old lover, which she eventually agrees to do. Montauban, however, finds out and - as you can imagine - is not best pleased.

This is truly a novel of sensibility and is such an easy read. I don't want to give away the ending but I do love a book where you can say "everyone dies at the end" and you can nearly say that about this one. Definitely worth a read.

[Kristina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this for my Prose class, and I actually quite enjoyed it!

[Daisy · Rating 3 out of 5]

decent! could use a bit of editing in my opinion (particularly savillon’s letters) but good ending!!

[Maria · Rating 2 out of 5]

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