Comedies of Courtship

A collection of comic short narratives explores the follies and feints of courtship among comfortable, often vain characters. Episodes hinge on secret engagements, sudden attractions, social pretence, and misread signals, producing mistaken identities, temperamental quarrels, and comic reconciliations. Settings move from country houses to continental towns, and tone shifts from ironic observation to farce, while recurrent themes examine hypocrisy, the persistence of desire despite duty, and the social mechanics that turn private emotions into public scandal. Each story resolves through disclosure, satire, or tempered reconciliation.