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040 _aUtSlPG
041 7 _aen
_2iso639-1
050 4 _aPR
100 1 _aBjelke Petersen, Marie,
_d1874-1969
245 1 4 _aThe captive singer
264 1 _aSalt Lake City, UT :
_bProject Gutenberg,
_c2026
300 _a1 online resource :
_bmultiple file formats
336 _atext
_btxt
_2rdacontent
337 _acomputer
_bc
_2rdamedia
338 _aonline resource
_bcr
_2rdacarrier
500 _aRelease date is 2026-02-22
508 _aDavid E. Brown and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
520 _a"The Captive Singer" by Marie Bjelke Petersen is a novel written in the early 20th century. It sets a London society beauty, Iris Dearn, against the wild allure of Australia—especially Tasmania—where a mysterious, chivalrous guide with a remarkable singing voice stirs both curiosity and feeling. The story promises romance and identity intrigue shaped by class divides, reputation, and the competing pulls of salons and bushland, with a determined suitor from England closing in. The opening of the novel moves from a glittering London reception—where guests debate love and modern mores and gossip about Iris’s refusal to play by society’s rules—to the Tasmanian mountains, where Iris and her cousin Mrs. Henderson befriend their guide, Mr. Rees, a reserved, educated “gentleman” doing humble work. In a limestone cave Iris lingers alone, panics when her lamp fails, and hears a haunting tenor voice rise from the darkness; Rees appears, soothes her terror with song, and leads her safely out, leaving her shaken and ashamed by her vulnerability. She avoids him until she can explain her mortification; he reassures her gently, then hurries off to help a sick neighbor, underscoring his quiet usefulness. Soon after, a country sports day showcases the local crowd’s exuberance and Rees’s skill: he rides a black thoroughbred, Prince, to a triumphant jumping win—spurred on by a rose Iris gives him—deepening her conflicted admiration. The section closes with Iris radiant yet inwardly unsettled, her cousin teasing, and the emotional consequences of the cave and the victory hanging in the dusk. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
534 _pOriginally published:
_cLondon: Hodder and Stoughton, 1917
653 _aRomance fiction, Australian
653 _aTasmania -- Fiction
856 4 _uhttps://archive.org/details/captivesinger00bjeliala
856 4 0 _uhttps://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78003
999 _c118723
_d118723