Ethel M. Dell

The Keeper of the Door Ethel M. Dell

Ethel Dell was an English writer of romance novels in the beginning of the 20th century. Her stories were often set in India and the British colonial possessions. Her stories were considered too racy at the time and her cousins used to try and count the times she used the words passion, tremble, pant and thrill. This story begins with a young man in a hammock who is slight of build and missing an arm. "She made a face at him and gave the hammock a vicious twitch which caused him to rock with some violence for several seconds. As he was wont pathetically to remark everyone bullied him because he was small and possessed only one arm having shed the other by inadvertence somewhere on the borders of the Indian Empire."