William Brighty Rands was born on 24 December 1823, in Chelsea, then a district on the western edge of London and already a place where commerce, domestic life, artistic ambition, and metropolitan poverty met in close quarters. He died on 23 April 1882, having lived only fifty-eight years, and his name is now far less familiar than the names of several Victorian writers whose work has dated more severely. Yet Rands o…
“An irreconcilable is simply an uncommitted person; one who not only makes no show of acquiescence in these matters, but who formally holds aloof from everything which could fairly be held to commit him to any such acquiescence.”