| She's All The World To Me | |
| Author: | Hall Caine |
| Language: | English |
| Publisher: | Harper & Brothers |
| Published: | 1885 |
| Media Type: | Print (paperback) |
| Pages: | 136 pp |
She's All The World To Me is a short early novel by Hall Caine published in 1885 by Harper & Brothers. The novel was the first of Caine's works to be set on the Isle of Man and it centered on themes that would become integral to his later novels: a love triangle, secret mounting sins and eventual redemption. It was published only in America due to copyright problems, but Caine was subsequently able to reuse a great deal of its material in later novels, notably in The Deemster.
Danny Fayle, a young fisherman in Peel, is too shy to make much of his love for Mona Cregeen, a skilled machinist at the town's net factory. Mona lives with her mother and apparent young sister, Ruby, having moved to Peel from elsewhere on the island not long before. Mona has had a secret relationship with Christian Mylrea, the son of the well-respected MHK, Harbour Commissioner and magistrate, Evan Mylrea "Balladhoo". Mona and Christian keep their connection a secret as he tries to keep the debt incurred during his lax life in England from becoming known to his father. In order to try and pay off the debt, Christian falls in with the crew of Danny Fayle's boat who, independently of Danny, plan to wreck a boat on the rocks off Peel Castle. The plot is thwarted by the police but, for the sake of Christian's freedom, Mona enables the men to escape arrest. However, their boat becomes stuck on rocks during a storm and Danny Fayle eventually risks his life in order to save Christian and deliver him to Mona.
In 1885, Caine was short of money and wanted to gain exposure in America and so submitted She's all the World to Me to be published in New York by Harper & Brothers. It was published in paperback as number thirteen of Harper's Handy Series.[1] Caine had intended to publish the book also in England, but under the poor copyright laws of America at that time, Caine had forfeited the book’s copyright to Harper & Brothers. Because of this, Caine was forced to wipe his hands of the book entirely.[2] She's All The World To Me was serialised in the Liverpool Weekly Mercury between 21 March and 4 April 1885 immediately following the serialisation of The Shadow of a Crime.[3]
The book is not mentioned by name in Caine's autobiography,[4] nor at all in the major early biographical works on him by C. Fred Kenyon (1901) and Samuel Norris (1948).[5] A factor in this erasing of the book from the Hall Caine cannon is the fact that Caine re-used a great deal of the characters, occurrences and plots of the book in his later novels. This is most notable in his subsequent novel, The Deemster, which took the central scenes of She's all the World to Me as the backbone of its own narrative. Unlike the earlier and much shorter book, The Deemster was much better written and came to be a highly successful and acclaimed novel.[6]
The following are the main instances of material in She's all the World to Me that Caine used for his later novels: