“The real brilliance of The Story of a Modern Woman is how on every page some little sequin shimmers at us as we pass it by, an observation, a thought, an irony. A hundred throwaway gestures signal that we are in the presence of a great writer.” CHARLES FINCH.

Following the unexpected death of her father, Mary Erle is faced with having to support herself and her younger brother Jimmie. Her ambition to become an artist having been thwarted by her failure to qualify at art school, she instead takes up journalism and cheap fiction, but despite her misfortune, she is still, having once been raised in polite society, able to mingle among her set, and she looks forward to the return of and marriage to Vincent Hemming, an old family friend. However, when he marries another woman to advance his political career, Mary is left heartbroken. The marriage is a disaster, Vincent confesses his terrible mistake and pleads with Mary to run away with him. Mary, although still deeply in love with him, refuses. Yet despite her resolution, she is ‘conscious of the fascination, the odious fascination which belongs to sin.’

Dixon explores the double standards of late Victorian society over the expected behaviour of women, at which she balked even while making her heroine succumb to them.