[Gutenberg 63935] • The Counterplot

The Counterplot is the second novel by Hope Mirrlees. Written in 1923, it was originally published in 1924, and is the only one of Mirrlees's three novels to take place in contemporary settings.

The novel's protagonist is Teresa Lane, a woman of 28, living in Plasencia, a villa in the South-East of England, shortly after World War I, who studies the spectacle of her family life with the intent of transforming it into art. The result is a play, The Key, written by Teresa after the style of the Spanish autos sacramentales and set in Seville during the reign of Pedro the Cruel, the text of which is reproduced in its entirety within chapter eleven.