Books: Not New but Fresh

THE SEMI-ATTACHED COUPLE (250 pp.) —Emily Eden—Houghfon Mifflin ($2.75).

In 1814, when Emily Eden was 17, she wrote to her sister: "We hear that Lord Byron is going to be a good boy, and will never be naughty no more, and he is really and truly writing a new version of the psalms!" Soon afterwards, the eldest son of England's late Prime Minister Spencer Perceval read aloud to Emily from Paradise Lost, and she assumed from such attention that she could shortly expect a proposal. But Perceval was apparently fickle, and Emily was left...