First published in 1877, The First Violin is told in first person from two points of view. It begins with May Wedderburn living a quiet existence in a small town in England. Her quiet is disrupted when she attracts the attentions of the local wealthy landowner, Sir Peter. May has no interest in Sir Peter's offer of marriage and is even a bit afraid of him. Enter the town recluse Miss Hallam who offers to whisk May away to Germany where music and excitement await her immediately upon arrival.

A gothic novel by Jessie Fothergill! It is the story of May Wedderburn, a young English girl who flees her home for Germany to study music and develop her voice. Among the first encounters she makes in Germany is the acquaintance of the charming and mysterious Eugen Courvoisier. There is romance of the kind I so adore, it is a Bennett-Darcy romance, in that the two seem to be at cross purpose, but cannot seem to avoid the spin of gravity that pulls them together while pushing them apart.  All his lines were lines of beauty, but beauty which had power and much masculine strength; nowhere did it degenerate into flaccidity, nowhere lose strength in grace.

Jessie Fothergill was an English novelist. She was born at Cheetham Hill in Manchester. She was the daughter of John Fothergill who was a cotton merchant. She was educated at a boarding school in Harrogate. Fothergill closely observed the life led by cotton workers and carefully transcribed it into her late fiction. In 1874 she visited Germany and on her return she published a novel of Lancashire life, Healey. Her experience in Germany was also reflected in her novel, The First Violin, which made her name. Deteriorating health took her abroad several times to a milder climate, and was the reason for her thirteen month stay in America in 1884-85.