AustLit

'A passionate and controversial novel set in turn-of-the-century Europe

'Henry Handel Richardson’s debut, published in London in 1908, is set in the music scene of Leipzig, a cosmopolitan centre for the arts drawing students from around the world—among them Maurice Guest, a young Englishman, who falls helplessly in love with an Australian woman, Louise Dufrayer. Maurice Guest is the story of this overwhelming passion.

'The novel was deemed too controversial to be published as Richardson intended, and she was forced to cut twenty thousand words from the original manuscript and tone down its language.' (Publication summary)

'It is a detective story, and has to do with buried treasures stolen from the ruined palaces of a forgotten city in China by three adventurers, one of whom tricks his partners and escapes with the spoils. The scene then shifts to the Occident - to London, Paris, and Italy - where the hero detective follows the absconding partner in order to restore to the other adventurers their booty'.

Source: New York Times, 6 July 1901.