Athens was described without the author ever having seen the city.

After much wrangling, in which the lady said that her 'prince of publishers,' as she had once called him, had 'treated her barbarously,' the novel went into the hands of the Longmans, who published it, not without some remonstrance as to certain of its sentiments.

The successful Lady Morgan afterwards described _Ida_ as a bad book, so perhaps here, as usually, Phillips was not far wrong in his judgment.

A similar quarrel seems to have taken place over the next novel, _The Missionary_.

Here Phillips again received the manuscript, discussed terms with its author, and returned it.