ABSTRACT
H.B. Finlay Knight published his first of only two novels called A Girl with a Temper: A Romance of the Wills Act in 1892. Its title suggests a children’s tract on the perils of misbehavior more than a three-volume novel, but the narrative reveals a sensational story about the proper drafting and execution of a will that defies legal and literary genres. Knight’s novel makes use of plot elements typical of the sensation novel: enforced marriages, disappointed lovers, suppressed identities, inheritances lost and regained. It is more interesting, however, for its mixture of these conventions with prosaic accounts, even author’s footnotes, explaining the legal mechanism of bequeathing and inheriting property, the location of Somerset House, and instructions for how to consult “proved” or probated wills. This incongruous pairing of romance and bureaucracy-or, more particularly, the sense of romance in bureaucracy-nonetheless illustrates how the will functioned within and alongside the development of the realist novel.
