Jonty Claypole

And she's financially independent.

She has to make money.

And she decides to turn to fiction because then is now there is more money in fiction than there is in poetry.

So she starts to write novels in 1788, but she doesn't sell out.

That's what I love about Charlotte Smith.

Her novels are filled with the political radicalism that she was known for.

Now, her masterpiece is considered to be a novel called The Old Manor House, which she published in 1793.

This was one of my lockdown reads, by the way.

And I started to read it.

I was like a thriller.

I was completely gripped.

And The Old Manor House is about a young man called Orlando Summerieve, whose family live in a kind of shabby gentility on the edges of the estate of Rayland Hall.

They're sort of disinherited from the house and the estate.

But the current owner of the house, Mrs. Rayland, is very old.

She hasn't got any heirs.

And she's sort of grooming Orlando to be her heir.

So he has to come and stay quite a lot with her.

Now, the problem is, is that while he's staying there at the house, there is a young woman called Monomia, a very unusual name, Monomia.

There aren't very many Monomias these days.

Monomia is an orphan who has been adopted by her aunt, who is the housekeeper to Mrs. Ryland.