Charles Osborne completes his homage to Christie with this third and final adaptation of an original Christie play. Christie's exquisite timing and clever sleight-of-mind tricks are a delight, while Osborne has the good sense not to embroider the tale. A typical closed cast of characters occupies the temporary country home of Henry and Clarissa Hailsham-Brown: the seemingly scatterbrained Clarissa; her stepdaughter, Pippa; the odious Oliver Costello, who has married Pippa's mother; Sir Rowland Delahaye, Clarissa's godfather and a man of honor; an outspoken gardener; a butler; a cook; and Inspector Lord, the rather diffident policeman.
Clarissa Dalloway, elegant and vivacious, is preparing for a party and remembering those she once loved. In another part of London, Septimus Warren Smith is shell-shocked and on the brink of madness. Smith's day interweaves with that of Clarissa and her friends, their lives converging as the party reaches its glittering climax.
Writing of the Heart and the Epistolary Form - The Case of Richardson's Clarissa
A university booklet for the students of literary criticism. Contains a set of essays devoted to the interpretation of "Clarissa, or the History of a Young Lady" - a novel by Samuel Richardson written in the eighteenth century. The interpretation is based on the epistolary form. See the table of content for full information.