Description
A novel written in collaboration by four of the most well-known and most appreciated Victorian writers, Charles Dickens, Adelaide Anne Procter, Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell and Wilie Collins, A House to Let is an excellent story presented in a variety of styles at some points it is very humorous, at others melodramatic and suspenseful all the way.The novel first presents a frame, then inserts four stories into that frame. An elderly lady is advised by her physician to find an apartment to rent in London. She finds the apartment, a place that is comfortable and also has a house opposite that is strangely decaying and marked with the sign To Let. She becomes curious about the history of the house that has had no dweller for almost a decade. She keeps an eye on the building and nobody seems to enter or leave it, but then, on two occasions, she sees a pair of eyes looking back at her from the house, which intrigues her even further. Being old and sick, she cannot investigate herself. Therefore, she sends out two people, a suitor of hers and a servant, to find out about the place. They bring back stories about the house when they return and these stories are the narratives that make up the book.The best word to describe the stories in the book is charming. – four charming stories that revolve around a ghostly, decrepit building and four attempts to solve a mystery. However, none of them provides a complete account of the history of the house, the mystery being finally solved by the house itself. The stories in the book are not signed by the individual authors, so the guessing game about the house can continue with an equally exciting dilemma about who wrote which story.