Adventuress and opportunist, Ethelberta reinvents herself to disguise her humble origins, launching a brilliant career as a society poet in London with her family acting incognito as her servants. Turning the male-dominated literary world to her advantage, she happily exploits the attentions of four very different suitors. Will she bestow her hand upon the richest of them, or on the man she loves? Ethelberta Petherwin, alias Berta Chickerel, moves with easy grace between her multiple identities, cleverly managing a tissue of lies to aid her meteoric rise. In The Hand of Ethelberta (1876), Hardy drew on conventions of popular romances, illustrated weeklies, plays, fashion plates and even his wife's diary in this comic story of a woman in control of her destiny.
- ISBN10 0333177614
- ISBN13 9780333177617
- Publish Date 30 October 1975 (first published December 1951)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 17 October 2003
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Pan Macmillan
- Imprint Macmillan
- Edition New Wessex ed
- Format Paperback
- Pages 432
- Language English