The Bloomsbury Review

First published in 1877, Frances Fuller Victor’s “The New Penelope” played on emotion but centered it in the action of the mining environment, including some realistic depictions. The work is fiction, however, and drama plays out against the backdrop of gold seekers, camp life, and wilderness adventures. The writing style may be old- fashioned – certainly the interactions between men and women are long out of date- but this production paints another level of complexity onto the ordinary elements involved in the forty-niner experience. And unusual for the time, a woman’s voice and interests emphasize a perspective that the average gold miner, or wannabe, might not have grasped while reading gold rush accounts in the local paper.