The title is slightly misleading as the bulk of the narrative focuses on the first-person accounts of Laura Glenmorris and her daughter Medora, as told to George Delmont, the young philosopher. Smith parodies the romanctic/Gothic genre of the eighteenth-century while simultaneously using both modes to her own advantage. She critiques the English legal system, especially as it relates to women, and the views of Delmont, and other philosophical idealists, as inadequate to fight against the corruption of English law. Originally published the same year as _Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman_, 1798, fans of Mary Wollstonecraft should enjoy this novel for Smith shares many of Wollstonecraft's social views. Additionally, fans of Ann Radcliffe and Jane Austen should also enjoy _The Young Philosopher_. The inset tales are suspenseful and humorous while the main plot of the novel is more complex than a simple love story between Delmont and Medora (told by an omniniscient narrator). As a student of Smith's romantic poetry I was pleasantly surprised to discover this enjoyable and thought-provoking novel.

This book is designed to create a bleak,desolate tone (a la Wuthering Heights), and it does so by describing the heroine's graduallyincreasing suffering and oppression. The novel, like so many of Arthur Conan Doyle's SherlockHomes stories, exposes the vices that can flourish in the lonely, isolated British manor. The hero'ssufferings come as a blast of fresh air and relief in the novel: Orlando goes to fight on the Britishside in the American revolution and ends up wounded with several Indians in a rather inaccuratelydescribed American landscape. There is a sort of sequel, The Wanderings of Warwick, which tells what happens to two of the characters who disappear for a huge portion of the novel. The heroine is rather pathetic for a good deal of the novel, but she gets a burst of feminist courage at the end of the novel as she sets out on her own and finds a job.