Maurice Guest

by Henry Handel Richardson

"Maurice Guest" by Henry Handel Richardson is a novel published in 1908. In turn-of-the-century Leipzig, a young Englishman falls madly in love with an Australian woman, Louise Dufrayer. This debut novel traces their doomed affair to its tragic conclusion, offering an intense psychological study of obsessive love. Richardson's original manuscript was deemed too controversial, forcing her to cut twenty thousand words and moderate the language before publication. The novel was later adapted into the 1954 film "Rhapsody" starring Elizabeth Taylor.