The Choice of a Life

The Choice of a Life is an elegantly written and engaging story of over 14,000 words, exploring the themes of ambition, self-development, introspection, and the dichotomy of love versus practical or selfish considerations. The narrative follows the fortunes of Robert Egerton, the son of a prosperous mill owner who has managed to lift his family out of obscurity, and arrange for his children's education at Oxford University.

A chance encounter leads to an introduction into the circle of a noted and influential aristocratic family. Through a combination of charm, native intelligence and excellent social skills, Robert endears himself to them and is eventually raised far beyond what he could normally have hoped to achieve. Yet he is obliged to make certain choices in his personal life, or else have them made for him.


About the Author
R.S. Brinton read classics at Oxford University. In the course of a successful career, overseeing the affairs of a flourishing international family concern, he found time to conduct extensive tours, travelling to sites of classical antiquity throughout Italy, Greece and the Mediterranean. He served in honorary office and was an accomplished public speaker who gave addresses to literary societies. Additional biographical information is available on the R.S. Brinton wikipedia web page.


Excerpts from The Choice of a Life:

'The mill interested him more keenly, and the whir of its thousands of spindles touched the romantic side of him. Often, in the darkness of a winter’s morning, he would stop and listen to the dull roar of the machinery, and admire in an abstract way the greatness of the scheme and the mind of man that had set all these parts in motion for the formation of a perfect whole... and yet, the reality was very flat. It resolved itself into a money-making concern, in which he had a very dull part to perform.'

'There was the business, and the fact that he had only £250 a year; and the dawning conviction that with that he was, after all, a bit ridiculous in aspiring to associate with his superiors in the social scale—a jackdaw trying to circle with the eagles.'

'On one such visit to London, he was riding one morning in the park, a thing which he delighted in, whenever he could beg or borrow a horse, and enjoying the freshness of the June morning, and the brightness of his surroundings, with an intensity that the novelty of it bestowed, when he caught sight of two faces that seemed familiar to him. Two girls, well dressed and well mounted, and followed by a short groom with a cockade, had just cantered past him, and had cast, as he thought, a glance of half recognition in his direction.'

'Two girls preeminent of their kind... Diana imperious, ambitious, magnificent; of deep passion, but complete self-control; born to a commander; a woman to be proud of, to admire, to revere... Dorothy, cast in a far more delicate mould; gentle, sensible, and affectionate; capable of great love, but not of struggling for it.'

'The light faded; and, when he could read no more, he wandered off into the dangerous realms of imagination... it was wicked and foolish, but it was delicious: a strange mixture of pleasure and pain, in which the pleasure increased in proportion to his abstraction from the realities of his life.'