In 1895, this scandalous book titled "The Woman Who Did" by Grant Allen promulgating certain startling views on marriage and kindred questions, became a bestseller. The book told the story of an independent, young, self-assured middle-class woman who has a child out of wedlock. Herminia Barton, Cambridge-educated daughter of the Dean of Dunwich, is more determined than most to arrange her own life. She accordingly enters into a relationship outside marriage with one of her own 'free and advanced' kind, the lawyer Alan Merrick. The consequences of that decision test her resolve to the very limit. The author was sympathetic to the feminist cause and saw his novel as a means to propagate women's rights. However, the novel was controversial right from the start, with conservative readers as well as feminists criticizing Allen for the heroine he had invented.