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Victorian humour generally doesn't convert well across time. The Wrong Package is one of the exceptions. The story revolves around the intended loss of life of Joseph Finsbury, who, as a young ones, with his sibling Masterman, joined a tontine - a design whereby each entrant will pay a set amount and the total, with interest, is given to the main one who lives the longest. At the start of the story, there are three survivors and then two - the Finsbury brothers. Joseph is guardian to two young boys and a woman, Morris, John and Julia. He was in charge of the young boys' legacy of £30,000 and spent it unwisely in his declining leather business. The amount of money has basically disappeared, and on achieving adulthood they need their inheritance again! Uncle Joe must be kept alive at all costs. Then there's a coach crash.... The novel was either disregarded or highly criticised when first published, not least one suspects because of the irreverent frame of mind to death and its own attendant rituals, subjects which commanded huge admiration and veneration almost amounting to obsession from the Victorians. It is, however, a greatly entertaining tale with a convoluted, complicated story that can defy understanding - but it is of no subject! A cast of gloriously eccentric personas certainly had a comic influence on one well known literary amount of the period. "I laughed over it dementedly while i read it. That man [Stevenson] has only one lung but he enables you to laugh with all of your inside." (Rudyard Kipling)
