Evelyn Juers Exile. "Scintillating and rather magical... "House of Exile" is an extraordinary book, and a really rare accomplishment."() "The Recluse" (2012) is a long biographical essay about Eliza Emily Donnithorne, who lived most of her life in isolation in a large house in the Sydney suburb of Newtown. She is thought to have been the model for the character of Miss Havisham in Charles Dickens’ "Great Expectations", who was jilted at the altar, and became a recluse, wearing her wedding dress, and keeping her wedding banquet set, until the day she died. But did it really happen like this? "The Recluse"
Miss Havisham dressing, Miss Havisham received a letter from Compeyson and realised he had defrauded her and she had been left at the altar. Humiliated and heartbroken, Miss Havisham suffered a mental breakdown and remained alone in her decaying mansion Satis House – never removing her wedding dress, wearing only one shoe, leaving the wedding breakfast and cake uneaten on the table, and allowing only a few people to see her. She even had the clocks in her mansion stopped at twenty minutes to nine: the exact time when she had received Compeyson's letter. Time passed and Miss Havisham had her lawyer,