HALL CAINE (ne Thomas Henry Hall Caine) born (d: 1931); As a novelist, Hall Caine was immensely popular in his own time and almost completely forgotten today. Diminutive and slight as a man in his time, he is rather impossible to read today, his language so stilted, plots so melodramatic as to be rendered unintentionally hilarious. Caine’s novel The Deemster (1887) resets the biblical David-Jonathan story in contemporary England. The chapter called “Passing the Love of Women” is of particular interest, not only for its significant title, but for its Victorian heavy breathing thought to stimulate men in love. Its pages fairly flicker like a silent movie melodrama.