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Lower than Vermin

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Lower than Vermin
1950 dustjacket
AuthorDornford Yates
GenreNovel
PublisherWard Lock & Co[1]
Publication date
1950[1]
Media typePrint
Pages324[1]

Lower than Vermin is a 1950 novel by the English author Dornford Yates (Cecil William Mercer). It was not a commercial success, dealing as it did with a vanished pre-war world of upper class characters that held little attraction to readers of the 1950s.

The title comes from a 1948 speech by Labour minister Aneurin Bevan in which he described the Conservative Party as "lower than vermin".[2]

Plot

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The book deals with the history of a noble family from about the time of Victoria's Diamond Jubilee until after the Second World War, much of it related by the governess, Miss Carson.

Background

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Mercer was very much not in sympathy with the new post-war order, and having received many letters from readers asking him to write again of the "old days" he once again returned to his preferred period with this novel.[2] He wrote to a correspondent, "What we used to call the nobility and gentry of England have been so monstrously misaligned and misrepresented for so long that I felt it was only right that some author of standing should present a true picture of them and their habits and manners before it was too late."[3]

Critical reception

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Mercer's autobiographer AJ Smithers acknowledged "Mercer's mild obsession with the kind of people whom he ranked only a little lower than the angels."[3] He noted that the author's ideas had been formed well before 1914 and they were never mitigated. By the time Mercer was thirty he "had seen a good cross-section of the gentry of England and ... he preserved it like a fly in amber."[4]

The book was not a great success, appearing to a new generation of post-war readers to be a caricature completely divorced from present reality.[3]

References

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  1. ^ a b c "British Library Item details". primocat.bl.uk. Retrieved 16 May 2020.
  2. ^ a b Smithers 1982, p. 212.
  3. ^ a b c Smithers 1982, p. 214.
  4. ^ Smithers 1982, p. 215.

Bibliography

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