Victorian Secrets

Independent press dedicated to publishing books from and about the nineteenth century

The First Adman: Thomas Bish and the Birth of Modern Advertising

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The First Adman: Thomas Bish and the Birth of Modern AdvertisingOur final biography of 2012 is The First Adman: Thomas Bish and the Birth of Modern Advertising. Well, it’s not really a biography, as Bish was an elusive figure who became overshadowed by his own creativity.

The First Adman reveals the untold story of how modern advertising was pioneered 200 years ago by the entrepreneur, self-publicist and dodgy Member of Parliament, Thomas Bish. Royalty and politicians courted this early media star and society figure, who was one of the best-known men in the land and allegedly more famous than the prime minister himself.

Bish’s promotional creativity helped the old state lottery raise the equivalent of £2 billion for good causes, also bringing him great wealth. Hiring the essayist Charles Lamb as a copywriter and George Cruikshank to illustrate his advertisements, Bish professionalised ad campaigns. Techniques he pioneered include spin doctoring, graphic design, modern typography, direct marketing, and even early market research. Unfortunately his talents did not prevent him from being expelled from both the Stock Exchange and the House of Commons. Although in many ways a thorough rogue, Bish was one of the few prominent Englishmen to argue that the Irish were being unfairly treated, and his Plea for Ireland made a compelling case for economic stimulus, a position that earned him the friendship of Daniel O’Connell.

The complexity, inventiveness and sheer audacity of Bish are all captured in this rollicking story.

To find out more, please visit:

http://victoriansecrets.co.uk/catalogue/the-first-adman-thomas-bish-and-the-birth-of-modern-advertising/

 

The Excellent Doctor Blackwell: The Life of the First Woman Physician by Julia Boyd

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Cover of The Excellent Doctor Blackwell by Julia BoydEven Punch, a magazine frequently hostile to the emancipated woman, felt grudging admiration for Elizabeth Blackwell (1821-1910), the first woman doctor to be registered in Britain. From a 21st-century perspective, with women doctors now in the majority, it’s difficult to appreciate just how hard it was for these indefatigable pioneers, who encountered considerable hostility and even violence when pursuing their vocation.

Blackwell’s early years were less combative, growing up part of a  loving family in Bristol. Her father’s sugar refining business provided a good standard of living, although its reliance on slavery proved difficult to reconcile with his liberal politics. The liveliness of the household was tempered somewhat by the Blackwell grandparents, who are described as a “gloomy presence”. Blackwell Snr once nailed up all the cupboards, condemning them as “slut holes”, and his domineering behaviour was an early lesson in gender politics for Elizabeth and her sisters.

In 1828 the sugar refinery burned down and a series of poor business decisions exacerbated the repercussions. Relishing the prospect of a new start, and perhaps prompted by the political unrest that gripped Bristol, the Blackwells decided to emigrate to New York. Eleven-year-old Elizabeth seems to have accepted this momentous change philosophically, but it must have been disruptive for a girl approaching the ghastliness of adolescence.

Unfortunately, the Blackwells’ arrival coincided with the publication of Fanny Trollope’s mischievous Domestic Manners of the Americans, which did little to ease their transition into another culture, where those from the mother country were now viewed with suspicion. Notwithstanding this tension, the family soon established themselves in business and were able to move to prosperous Long Island. Any hopes of respectability were dashed, however, when Elizabeth’s Uncle Charles plunged into a bigamous marriage with the governess.

Renewed financial problems and the death of Mr Blackwell left the family penniless and struggling for survival. Like many women who found themselves in similar circumstances, the Blackwells had no option but to seek teaching work, despite having no liking for children. Aged only nineteen, Elizabeth Blackwell was stuck in a job she hated, and with no prospect of escape. A move to Kentucky made matters worse for the passionate opponent of slavery. There she was appalled when a young black girl was placed as a screen between her and a fire.

It was the publication of Margaret Fuller’s seminal work Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845) that prompted Blackwell to think about her future direction. When a dying friend told her she would much rather consult a woman doctor, Blackwell started to seriously consider medicine as a career. While this decision seems straightforward, it was mainly thanks to a series of oversights that she realised her ambition, and her choice of profession remained deeply controversial during her lifetime.

Blackwell’s application to New York’s Geneva Medical College in 1847 was accepted in principle, although on the cunning proviso that the final decision rested with the students (who, it was assumed, would reject her outright). As it happened, there was only one voice of dissent and its owner was quickly beaten into submission. While this might appear a refreshingly enlightened episode, the students thought it all an elaborate hoax and were merely playing along. Before they knew what had happened, Blackwell had registered and her studies were underway. When she graduated, on 23 January 1849, the Dean marked the occasion with a speech to honour their unusual student’s achievement. He spoiled it, however, by adding that “Such cases must ever be too few to disturb the existing relations of society.”

The newly qualified Dr Blackwell decided to move back to England, settling in London so as to gain valuable experience at metropolitan hospitals. While treating a baby infected with gonorrhoea, contaminated fluid squirted in Blackwell’s eye, leaving it sightless, disfigured and protruding. It was a cruel irony that a woman who probably remained a virgin should have her life blighted by a sexually transmitted disease. On that fateful day, her hopes of becoming a surgeon were dashed and she was obliged to wear a glass eye.

Determined to make a difference nonetheless, Blackwell returned to America with her sister Lucy and established the New York Dispensary for Poor Women and Children. Their insistence on treating black patients made the clinic a target for segregationists, and Blackwell found life tough. Meanwhile, her brother Henry married Lucy Stone, an impressive feminist who refused to take his name or to include the word “obey” in the marriage service. Henry himself became a proud feminist, publicly renouncing his masculine privileges. This extraordinary family was extended when brother Sam married Antoinette Brown, the first woman in America to be ordained a minister.

Although the Blackwells did so much to challenge convention, Elizabeth herself had no interest in the formal women’s rights movement and declined to be involved in Seneca Falls Convention of 1848. She enjoyed being a figurehead in the world of medicine, believing that to be a more effective contribution to female emancipation. It’s hard to disagree with her – a decade after her graduation, there were 200 women doctors practising in America. She also inspired Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, the first woman to qualify as a doctor in Britain. A certain George Eliot was so impressed that she sent a letter, expressing how much she would like to know Dr Blackwell. Florence Nightingale remained unconvinced, finding only a strong-minded woman who dared to contradict her.

In 1858 Blackwell became the first woman to be placed on the newly formed British Medical Register, which permitted the inclusion of doctors holding foreign degrees. The authorities were aghast to discover that they had failed to specifically exclude women, quickly closing the loophole. When Blackwell returned to England in 1869, there was still considerable hostility against women doctors. The opposition was led by Professor Robert Christison, whose sound scientific reasoning was that original sin rendered women unfit to practice medicine. Women who attempted to attend anatomy lessons had both mud and abuse hurled at them, although this loutish behaviour actually helped the cause of women doctors, who conducted themselves with dignity throughout.
Blackwell’s return to England also coincided with the passing of the third Contagious Diseases Act, legislation that allowed authorities to confine and forcibly treat prostitutes suspected of carrying venereal disease. Blackwell sensibly pronounced that the government should be addressing the causes of prostitution, rather than its effects. Although in many ways a moral conservative, Blackwell was outspoken on female sexuality, challenging the convenient misconception that women were sexless creatures. She was also ahead of her time in recognising the concept of marital rape, an abuse not outlawed until 1991.

Elizabeth Blackwell was a formidable woman whose outspoken and often idiosyncratic behaviour made her an uncomfortable role model for feminists. It is hard to overstate her achievements, however, and her impact on the course of social history is equalled by only a handful of luminaries. Julia Boyd’s superb biography reveals Blackwell as a complex, tenacious and often frustrating character whose extraordinary single-mindedness changed our world. Like all skilled biographers, Boyd celebrates Blackwell’s achievements without becoming overly deferential to her subject. We see Blackwell’s faults, but cannot fail to be cheered by her brilliance.

The Excellent Doctor Blackwell:The Life of the First Woman Physician by Julia Boyd is available in hardback

New edition of Weeds by Jerome K. Jerome

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Weeds by Jerome K. Jerome

We’re very pleased to announce a new critical edition of Weeds: A Story in Seven Chapters by Jerome K. Jerome.

First published anonymously in 1892, Weeds marked a significant departure from the humour that made Jerome K. Jerome famous. This disturbing story of sexual corruption shows marital fidelity as a perpetual struggle, with Dick Selwyn falling for the attractions of his wife’s young cousin, Jessie. The link between mental and physical corruption is sustained through a central metaphor of a weed-infested garden, which perishes through neglect.

With its radical ending, this story of the dark side of passion casts an important light on late-nineteenth-century sexual politics and gender ideology. Jerome engages with contemporary debates on degeneration and the emergence of the New Woman, offering a powerful evocation of fin-de-siècle society.

This edition, edited by Carolyn W. de la L. Oulton includes an introduction, explanatory footnotes, author biography, and a wealth of contextual material. Available in print and Kindle editions.

Find out more about Weeds: A Story in Seven Chapters by Jerome K. Jerome

Weeds by Jerome K. Jerome

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Cover of Weeds by Jerome K. JeromeJerome K. Jerome is famous, of course, for writing one of the funniest books in the English language: Three Men in a Boat. What is less well known is that he desperately tried to reinvent himself as a serious author. Weeds: A Story in Seven Chapters was published anonymously in 1892, Jerome hoping that the novella would be judged on its own merits, rather than compared unfavourably with his comic tales of irascible terriers and tinned pineapple. Unfortunately for him, his publisher Arrowsmith was nervous about the story’s frank portrayal of adultery and it was never made available for general sale during the author’s lifetime.

While the Victorians’ moral squeamishness can be difficult to fathom for the modern reader, it’s not difficult to see why the edition was pulled. This disturbing narrative of sexual corruption shows marital fidelity as a perpetual struggle, with anti-hero Dick Selwyn falling for the attractions of his wife’s nubile young cousin. The link between his mental and physical corruption is sustained through a central metaphor of a weed-infested garden, which perishes through neglect (as predicted by the lugubrious narrator). Although there is the occasional comedic flash, this is a powerful evocation of fin-de-siecle society and its fears of degeneration.

Now, Jerome K. Jerome was no friend of the New Woman, but what really attracted me to Weeds was its radical ending (I shan’t spoil it), which embodies a clear challenge to the prevailing sexual double standard and casts an important light on late-Victorian gender ideology. I discovered when publishing Jerome’s biography that he was a complex and often contradictory man, and this story epitomises it more than any other.

Weeds: A Story in Seven Chapters is available in print and Kindle editions. It includes Mona Caird’s brilliant essay ‘Does Marriage Hinder a Woman’s Self-Development’.

 

Spooky tales for Halloween

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Wooooooooohooooooo! (or whatever noise a bat makes)Halloween is almost upon us, and what better way to spend it than indulging in some nineteenth-century ghastliness? As we all know, nobody writes a ghost story quite like the Victorians, and the three writers we’re showcasing below were experts in unsettling their readers.

Twilight Stories by Rhoda Broughton

Twilight Stories by Rhoda BroughtonRhoda Broughton’s Twilight Stories was first published as Tales for Christmas Eve in 1873. The tales had also appeared in the literary magazine Temple Bar, and have since been reproduced in ghost story anthologies throughout the decades. Readers have been impressed with Broughton’s ability to make the apparently mundane appear mysterious and, in some cases, terrifying. Herbert Van Thal wrote of them: “Twilight Stories should excite the most blasé follower of the tale that should be read ‘last thing at night’…Miss Broughton was clearly a forerunner of M R James.” Find out more…

Weird Stories by Charlotte Riddell

Weird Stories by Charlotte RiddellCharlotte Riddell’s Weird Stories have been popular with ghost story aficionados ever since they were first published in 1882. The Times reviewer wrote of them: “Weird Stories are sensational enough in all conscience, seeing that the main action is directed by supernatural agencies, and that disagreeably obtrusive ghosts haunt the scenes of their earthly troubles. But these mysteries are adroitly realized, and the stories are so probable as to be pleasantly thrilling; nervous people, indeed, might prefer to read the book on a railway journey by daylight rather than in a lonely apartment towards the small hours.” Find out more…

The Blood of the Vampire by Florence Marryat

The Blood of the Vampire by Florence MarryatThe Blood of the Vampire (1897) was rather overshadowed by a certain Transylvanian Count who made his debut in the same year.  Although there are similarities with Dracula, Marryat’s vampire is female and drains her victims’ life force, rather than their blood. Men find her impossible to resist, and she leaves a trail of destruction throughout Europe. Marryat’s “psychic vampire” represents both the racial “other” and the New Woman of the period, both of whom were perceived as a threat to fin-de-siècle society.  This curious novel engages with key debates, such as race, women’s rights, heredity, syphilophobia and the occult. Find out more…

Hope and Glory: A Life of Dame Clara Butt

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Cover of Hope and Glory: A Life of Dame Clara ButtSir Thomas Beecham cheekily remarked that when she sang in Dover, Dame Clara Butt could be heard in Calais. If you’ve listened to her rousing performances of Hope and Glory on YouTube, you’ll know that he had a point. Standing an Amazonian 6’2″ tall, Dame Clara was a towering cultural icon of the Victorian and Edwardian eras, symbolising the glory of an empire on which the sun never set. She won fans all around the world, performing concerts in America, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and India, and commanding five-figure fees. With her entourage of 20 staff, she would sail the seven seas to reach her adoring public.

Although from humble origins as a trawlerman’s daughter, everyone knew that Clara was destined for a glittering career. Queen Victoria felt strongly enough to actually pay for some of her studies, and Clara became a firm friend of the royal family. Success turned her into a formidable woman, but Clara worked tirelessly to raise funds for good causes, and was honoured with a damehood for raising morale during the dark days of World War One.

Clara’s incredible talent brought her much joy, but she also suffered great tragedy in her personal life, losing two of her children and enduring crippling back pain. She sought solace in Theosophy, travelling to India, where she met Mahatma Gandhi and the socialist reformer Annie Besant. Even when diagnosed with a virulent form of spinal cancer, she immediately planned a final tour of Australia (most of us would take to our beds with some hard drugs). She died with great courage, in the same week as both George V and Rudyard Kipling, and the world was a sadder place without her.

I knew very little about Dame Clara before receiving the proposal for this biography, but was immediately captivated by the story of this extraordinary woman. One hundred years ago she was a household name and rarely out of the newspapers, but now she is known mainly by music aficionados. Working on the biography of Eugen Sandow last year made me realise that celebrity is ephemeral and even megastars are seldom remembered much beyond their own lifetime. Dame Clara is certainly one who should be celebrated all over again.

Hope and Glory: A Life of Dame Clara Butt by Maurice Leonard is available in print, Kindle and EPUB editions.

New biography of the legendary Dame Clara Butt

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Continuing our biography-fest, we are pleased to announce a new biography of Dame Clara Butt.

Dame Clara Butt (1872-1936) was one of the most celebrated singers of the Victorian and Edwardian eras, a symbol of the glory of a Britain on whose Empire the sun never set. Standing an Amazonian 6’2″ tall, Clara had a glorious contralto voice of such power that when she sang in Dover, Sir Thomas Beecham swore she could be heard in Calais. She was a great favourite of Queen Victoria, who helped pay for her studies. Dame Clara was also one of the few people who managed to remain friends with Marie Corelli.

In the first biography since her death, Maurice Leonard tells Dame Clara Butt’s remarkable story, from humble beginnings in Sussex, to her dazzling apotheosis by an adoring nation. With humour and insight, Leonard reveals the woman behind the cultural icon.

For more information, please visit:

http://victoriansecrets.co.uk/catalogue/hope-and-glory-a-life-of-dame-clara-butt/

Below the Fairy City: A Life of Jerome K. Jerome

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Cover of Below the Fairy City: A Life of Jerome K. JeromeI must confess to never having given much thought to the man behind Three Men in a Boat, one of the funniest books in the English language. When the manuscript for a biography of Jerome K. Jerome arrived on my desk, I expected to read about a lively and carefree man who never took life very seriously.  Instead, I discovered a complex, often dark, figure who was frustrating, comic and challenging in equal measure.

Many of his opinions seem painfully misguided to the modern reader, but Jerome was always prepared to admit he was wrong after reaching a better understanding of a thorny issue. He never really got to grips with the New Woman, but Jerome was a tireless campaigner for the animal welfare movement, and was always ready to champion the underdog, even if it landed him in court.

Jerome’s tenacity and lugubriousness can be ascribed in part to his difficult upbringing in Walsall with his Micawberish father and God-fearing mother. Living under the constant threat of poverty and damnation, the young Jerome was an enigmatic child who craved security and recognition. His life was transformed by a momentous move to the Fairy City of London, where a formative encounter with Charles Dickens influenced his choice of profession. Like his mentor, Jerome was forever associated with his comic creations, and never taken seriously as a diverse and innovative author.

Although famous primarily for his tale of jolly chaps larking about on the Thames, Jerome wrote seven other novels and was also a prolific journalist, essayist and dramatist, leaving behind a prodigious quantity of work, belying his famous quote “I like work. It fascinates me. I could sit and look at it for hours.” One of his most unusual books is Weeds: A Story in Seven Chapters, a shocking (for the time) and painful account of how adultery destroys a new marriage. Such was its force that the publisher seems not to have released it to the reading public. Had Jerome been associated with this novella during his lifetime, he might have earned a very different reputation.

Jerome K. Jerome’s complexity, idiosyncrasies and exquisite wit are all conveyed with great skill by Carolyn Oulton, and it was astonishing to me that this was the first biography of him in many decades, and the only one to delve into his early life. I hope other readers enjoy it as much as I did.

Below the Fairy City: A Life of Jerome K. Jerome by Carolyn W. de la L. Oulton

Below the Fairy City: A Life of Jerome K. Jerome

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We are very pleased to announce publication of a major new biography of Jerome K. Jerome by Carolyn W. de la L. Oulton. Jerome K. Jerome (1859-1927) was the author of Three Men in a Boat, one of the best-loved books in the English language, but much of his prolific career has been left unexplored.  Over a period of forty years, Jerome was variously a humourist,  novelist, journalist, essayist and dramatist, leaving behind him a prodigious quantity of work, belying his famous quote “I like work. It fascinates me. I could sit and look at it for hours.”

Find out more about Below the Fairy City: A Life of Jerome K. Jerome or read the prologue.

Effie by Suzanne Fagence Cooper

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Cover of Effie by Suzanne Fagence CooperHistory has not been kind to Effie Gray. Her first husband, John Ruskin, was supposedly terrified by her lower portions on their wedding night, while exasperated historians have blamed her for ruining the career of her second husband, John Millais. In this moving biography, Suzanne Fagence Cooper puts Effie centre stage, and we see her for the first time as an individual, as well as within the context of her two famous marriages.

Euphemia Chalmers Gray (1828-97) was the oldest of fifteen children, of whom only eight survived. What might have been an idyllic childhood in Scotland was punctuated by premature death and continual grief. This sadness notwithstanding, the Grays were a lively and close family, and Effie was happiest when with them. She was just twelve when John Ruskin first set eyes on her, and he was nearly twice her age at twenty-one. It is fair to say that his taste was for prepubescent girls – a taste more socially acceptable in those days, but unutterably creepy in our own. For most middle-class Victorian girls, marriage provided the only opportunity for leaving the family home and seeing something of the world.  In marrying an up-and-coming art critic, Effie envisaged a life of glittering parties and international travel, never imagining the reality of what being Mrs Ruskin might entail.

After a long and bumpy courtship, the couple married on 10 April 1848, the very day the Chartists marched on Hyde Park, and during a tumultuous period that saw Europe gripped by revolutionary fever. This unrest set the keynote for the Ruskins’ unhappy six-year marriage, notorious for Ruskin’s inability to stage his own uprising. Their wedding night is, of course, legendary, and it is handled with great deftness by the author. Cooper makes a convincing argument that it is unlikely Ruskin was repelled by his young wife’s pubic hair. As an art critic, he was used to viewing salacious images and must have been prepared for the spectacle of a naked woman. What he hadn’t anticipated was menstruation, and Cooper believes he was revolted by this bodily function. He eventually confessed to her “that the reason he did not make me his Wife is that he was disgusted with my person the first evening”.

It was as though Effie had lost her enigma and thereafter Ruskin had no interest in her, other than as an attractive possession.  When she suffered another family loss, he became irritated by the interruption to his studies. Furthermore, his elderly and pernickety parents always came first, and they were equally protective of their son. Any visible marital problems were quickly ascribed to Effie’s faults. His mistake was in confusing art with life, commenting cruelly that “the Alps will not wrinkle … but her cheeks will”. As Cooper writes, “Sadly, he was so bound up with the big picture, he failed to see what was needed on a domestic scale,” acknowledging his brilliance as an art critic, but not accepting this as an excuse for his failings as a husband.

Effie wrote heartbreaking letters to her parents, imploring them to help her escape this “unnatural” relationship. Meanwhile, Ruskin’s advocacy of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood brought the dashing John Everett Millais into their circle. This talented young artist was troubled by Ruskin’s neglect of his wife, becoming close to her when she sat as his model. It was clear to all that the marriage was doomed and both sides were focused on damage limitation. Ruskin bragged to his young sister-in-law Sophy that he could get rid of Effie whenever he wanted – an early lesson in masculine privilege that possibly affected her later life. He incorrectly assumed that his wife would do anything to avoid the ignominy of a medical examination, thinking he could have her declared insane and locked away. However, the evidence showed that Mrs Ruskin was still a virgin, nearly six years after her marriage.  The courts annulled the marriage, ruling that “John Ruskin was incapable of consummating the same by reason of incurable impotency.” Understandably embarrassed, he offered to prove his virility (goodness knows how), but this was declined. We’ll never know whether it would have stood up in court (so to speak).

Just under a year later, in July 1854, Effie was married to Millais. Although the Ruskin business was behind her, she wasn’t allowed to forget it. Queen Victoria refused to receive her at court, which seems remarkably hypocritical given the monarch’s own love of sex. That, at least, was not a problem in Effie’s second marriage, and she spent much of it pregnant, producing eight surviving children. Having such a large family to provide for turned Millais from the avant-garde to more commercial ventures, a decision that has been unfairly blamed on Effie. She might have encouraged him to become a portrait painter, but how else would he earn a living? Mr and Mrs Millais were not prepared to endure the grinding poverty experienced by Ford Madox Brown, the couple craving the position in society that his talent deserved. Going from one extreme to the other was a shock to Effie and family life brought more challenges, not least Millais’s Dickensian obsession with his sister-in-law Sophy, whose determination to remain his aesthetic ideal contributed to an early death from anorexia. After the artist’s death in 1896, Effie was able to return to her family in Scotland, the only place where she had ever felt truly at home.

Effie shines out from these pages as a strong and intelligent woman who deserved to become recognised in her own right, rather than as the wife of an eminent man. We see sixty years of Victorian life through her eyes, and she is a lively and engaging correspondent. Thanks in part to fifteen bundles of letters lent to the Tate Archive, the biographer has provided an intimate portrait of this fascinating character and it is difficult not to become completely absorbed in her world. Part of Cooper’s considerable skill is in not allowing her heroine to become overshadowed by her husbands’ achievements, or to be seen as a necessary sacrifice to their art. Effie is presented unapologetically as an ordinary middle-class woman, albeit one who led an extraordinary life.

Effie: The Passionate Lives of Effie Gray, Ruskin and Millais is available in paperback and Kindle editions.

Mr Briggs’ Hat by Kate Colquhoun

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Cover of Mr Briggs Hat by Kate ColquhounThere is something pleasingly understated about a book called Mr Briggs’ Hat. This seemingly ordinary item of apparel became key to one of the most famous murder cases of the nineteenth century, inspiring terror among the commuters of the heaving metropolis.

On the evening of 9 July 1864, Thomas Briggs, a 69-year-old bank clerk, boarded a train at Fenchurch Street. It should have taken him to his home in Hackney, as it had done hundreds of times before. However, the train arrived without Mr Briggs, and all that remained of him in his blood-soaked compartment was his bag and stick, along with a crushed hat that wasn’t even his. Although the blood actually sloshed through to the next compartment, there were no witnesses to the crime – this was a classic locked-room murder. It only became apparent what had happened when Briggs’ battered body was found by the railway tracks, and without his gold watch or hat.

Unsurprisingly, such a dramatic crime attracted a media frenzy, and the police were under enormous pressure to find the culprit. Not only was this the first murder on a British train, the victim was also a gentleman. Furthermore, he’d been travelling in a first-class compartment, where decent folk ought to be safe.

Officers soon apprehended a young German tailor called Franz Müller, who was found to be in possession of the stolen items and also seemed likely to have the missing hat. He sailed to America a few days after the murder, thereby making him appear more guilty. Although this evidence seemed fairly conclusive, the case was frustratingly complicated, with Müller able to provide rational explanations for what appeared to be damning evidence. The press delighted in stirring up xenophobic feeling against the suspect, leaving him little hope of a fair trial.

This seemingly simple case contained more twists and turns than a Victorian potboiler and they are skilfully chronicled by Kate Colquhoun. The narrative is well paced, with just the right amount of historical context, and the atmosphere is created in such a way as to make it utterly absorbing. The reader is kept guessing throughout by the ever-shifting composite view of characters and events.

Apart from this fine book, the legacy of the Briggs’ murder was the introduction of communication cords on trains and also windows between compartments, amusingly called Muller lights. Also, it changed people’s perception of their own safety. As Colquhoun writes:

The fact that the attack occurred on a railway train emphasised a terrifying new reality: that technological cleverness had spawned progress and wealth, but at a cost. It suggested that the price to be paid for modernity was, even for the most privileged in society, vulnerability and death.

The curious case of Mr Briggs’ hat was a pivotal moment in the Victorian age, and its dramatic significance is captured perfectly in this book.

Mr Briggs’ Hat is available in paperback and Kindle editions.

Into the Frame: The Four Loves of Ford Madox Brown by Angela Thirlwell

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Cover of Into the Frame: The Four Loves of Ford Madox Brown by Angela ThirlwellFord Madox Brown (1821-1893) is perhaps most famous for being on the margins of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, but was overshadowed by more dominant figures, such as Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Holman Hunt. Whereas works like ‘The Last of England’ form a legacy of his brilliance, the man behind the easel has remained elusive. Angela Thirlwell’s Into the Frame is a joint portrait of the four women who influenced Madox Brown: his two wives, Elisabeth and Emma, and the two women with whom he had very intense (but not necessarily sexual) relationships, Marie Spartali and Mathilde Blind.

Madox Brown’s ‘outsider’ status was due partly to his having been born in France, where he spent his formative years. Following the early deaths of his mother and sister, he became close to his first cousin, Elizabeth Bromley. They fell in love and married, leading a peripatetic life on the continent. Their son died after only a few days, but their daughter Lucy, born in 1843, was stronger and went on to become an artist. Although his daughter was spared, Elizabeth was not; she died of TB aged just 27.

Two years later, Emma Hill, an alluring young model, entered Madox Brown’s life. She overcame an underprivileged and illiterate background to become the second Mrs Madox Brown. Although determined to improve herself, she battled with a drink problem and was never able to overcome it. The marriage was tempestuous but endured, producing three children. They suffered poverty, with Madox Brown struggling to earn enough to maintain his family – a life that was more Desperate Remedies than Desperate Romantics. Emma was also her husband’s most significant model, and it is she who appears in ‘The Last of England’ – a painting that becomes mesmerising when read in the context of their marriage.

This marriage weathered the storms of Madox Brown’s obsession with other women. Marie Spartali, a well-educated and wealthy Anglo-Greek heiress was the antithesis of Emma, and inevitably there was tension when she became Madox Brown’s pupil. Although the great artist found himself utterly bewitched by his protégé, she instead fell in love with William Stillman, a handsome but worthless cad. I shared Thirlwell’s incredulity at how this beautiful and talented young woman could throw away the best years of her life on a man without any redeeming features. Standing an exceptional 6ft tall, Spartali was perhaps drawn to one of the few men taller than herself. They formed an imposing couple and were dubbed the ‘Lankies’ by William Michael Rossetti. The dynamics of this complex web are captured with skill – Madox Brown’s obsession for Spartali matched by hers for Stillman.

As if the household weren’t complicated enough, the Madox Browns were also joined by the German-Jewish writer Mathilde Blind (pronounced ‘Blint’), who had immigrated to England as a child after the revolutionary upheaval of 1848. Blind was an intellectual heavyweight and shared her host’s radical views and lack of religious belief. She was a free spirit, enjoying relationships with both men and women, but always avoiding long-term commitment. Her forthright views destroyed an early friendship with the novelist Rosa Nouchette Carey (with whom I suspect she was also romantically involved). The arrival of Blind in the story brings with it a superb evocation of the political turmoil of 1840s Europe and a deliciously acerbic portrait of Karl Marx.

Although Ford Madox Brown was not as flamboyant or exciting as some of his contemporaries, he emerges from this study as a complex and beguiling man. Thirlwell’s oblique approach of exploring him through the women in his life is both refreshing and accomplished. Madox Brown’s relationships with these four figures were complicated and turbulent, but he treated them all with kindness and loyalty. The historical context is impeccable, providing a succinct but satisfying sense of contemporary events. As an art specialist, Thirlwell is particularly captivating when describing Madox Brown’s work, leaving me with a desperate urge to view his paintings (now dispersed among various galleries).

Into the Frame is an enchanting blend of art history and biography, set against an expertly-drawn backdrop of nineteenth-century struggles – struggles that were also played out in Madox Brown’s own life.

Into the Frame: The Four Loves of Ford Madox Brown by Angela Thirlwell is available in paperback and Kindle editions.

A Thing in Disguise: The Visionary Life of Joseph Paxton by Kate Colquhoun

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Cover of A Thing in Disguise: The Visionary Life of Joseph Paxton by Kate ColquhounJoseph Paxton (1803-65) was a formidable auto-didact who embodied the Victorian idea of progress. From humble beginnings as the son of a poor farmer, Paxton landed the dream job of gardener to the Duke of Devonshire at the age of just 23. He remained there until the Duke’s death, 32 years later. Although horticulture was his great love, his talents were too diverse for him to remain tied to the land. A practical man who seemed to have a solution to any problem, “ask Paxton” became a national catchphrase. He went on to design mansions, sewage systems, and elaborate hothouses to ensure the wealthy never went without a pineapple.

Of course, Paxton is most famous for making the leap from designing ducal greenhouses to building the extraordinary glass structure that was (dismissively) dubbed the Crystal Palace. All large building projects inspire opprobrium, and there were many who doubted the wisdom of this shimmering edifice. However, given its enduring appeal as a national symbol over 150 years later, it was no white elephant. Paxton’s feat of engineering was quite breathtaking. The Crystal Palace was six times the size of St. Paul’s Cathedral, covering 18 acres, and it was visited by 6 million people eager to see the Great Exhibition of 1851 and the wonders it contained.

Many men would have had their heads turned by such extraordinary and high profile success, but Paxton kept his feet firmly on the ground. When away from home working on pioneering projects, he longed to be back at his beloved Chatsworth. Unusually for such a driven character, he was a devoted husband and father, and seemed to experience almost physical pain when separated from his family.

One of the most compelling aspects of this superb biography is the depiction of Paxton’s relationship with his employer. The unmarried Duke almost worshipped Paxton, lavishing him with gifts and doing everything in his power to keep him at Chatsworth. When in company, the Duke would talk of little other than his gardener’s achievements. Colquhoun avoids making any simplistic interpretation of the Duke’s motives, but the fact that he wrote in his diary “he is everything for me” conveys the poignancy of unrequited love.

Like most workaholics, Paxton had little time to smell his own roses, so his personality complemented perfectly that of the sophisticated Duke, whose vision spurred him on to ever greater achievements. It was a symbiotic relationship, and Paxton comes across as diminished after the Duke’s death in 1858. Needless to say, he wasn’t idle during his remaining years. He served as a Member of Parliament and conceived wide-reaching social projects. Thanks to successful financial speculation, Paxton enjoyed a comfortable life and the satisfaction of a life well lived.

This accomplished biography does justice to the great man and all that he achieved. With a polymath as a subject, Kate Colquhoun had a tough job in encompassing all the worlds that he spanned, but the material is handled with skill and assurance. I hope Colquhoun writes another biography, as she has a talent for evoking the spirit of an age and capturing a sense of the people who inhabited it.

A Thing in Disguise: The Visionary Life of Joseph Paxton is available in paperback and Kindle editions.

The Angel of the Revolution by George Chetwynd Griffith

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The Angel of the Revolution by George Chetwynd GriffithI must confess to a degree of scepticism on receipt of a proposal to publish The Angel of the Revolution, George Chetwynd Griffith’s 1893 tale of air warfare. Sci-fi generally resides in my Room 101 and has no place on the papal bookshelves. Imagine my surprise at finding myself completely gripped by a fantastical story in which an intrepid group of Socialists, Anarchists, and Nihilists defeat Capitalism with their superior knowledge of dirigibles (my new favourite word). Led by a crippled, brilliant Russian Jew and his daughter, Natasha, The Brotherhood of Freedom establishes a ‘pax aeronautica’ over the world, thanks to the expertise of scientist Richard Arnold.  Arnold falls in love with Natasha (the eponymous Angel), and Griffith builds a utopian vision of Socialism and romance.

The story moves at a rollicking pace and there’s never a dull moment. Griffith is also remarkably prescient in predicting future technology, including air travel, tidal power, and solar energy (showing far more imagination than Trollope in The Fixed Period). But it is his treatment of social responsibility that makes the novel particularly interesting in the current economic climate. Griffith imagines a world in which the wealth of the obscenely rich is sequestered, their property seized for the public good, and their businesses nationalised. Those with unearned incomes are forced to either pay punitive tax, or to undertake equivalent labour in the community. I’m not sure it would work as a blueprint, but it does show such debates are timeless.

Unsurprisingly, I know precisely nothing about aeronautics, but Steven McLean shows in the introduction and appendices how Griffith contributed to discourses on air travel. He clearly knew what he was talking about, as his son went on to invent the Rolls-Royce Avon jet engine. Griffith himself stuck with fiction, including A Honeymoon in Space, the story of a newly-married couple who use a spacecraft powered by anti-gravity to tour the solar system (as you do). That will be my next foray into science fiction. I’m not a convert, you understand, merely sci-fi curious.

The Angel of the Revolution by George Chetwynd Griffith is available in print and ebook editions.

Eugen Sandow at the Brighton’s CMP Festival

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14th July 2012, 2pm

St Nicholas’ Church, Brighton

Join Brighton-based publisher Victorian Secrets and author David Waller to discuss his critically-acclaimed book The Perfect Man — a biography of Eugen Sandow, the Victorian strongman who possessed what was deemed to be the most perfect male body and became an international phenomenon.

This event is part of the Clifton Montpelier & Powis Festival, featuring music, literary events, and film.

To book a ticket, please call the box office on 01273 709709 or visit www.brightonticketshop.com. Tickets also available on the door.

The Woman Who Saved the Children: A Biography of Eglantyne Jebb by Clare Mulley

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Cover of The Woman Who Saved the Children by Clare MulleyIt is one of life’s delicious ironies that the founder of Save the Children, Eglantyne Jebb, referred to infants as “little wretches”. She went on to say that “the Dreadful Idea of closer acquaintance never entered my head”. Notwithstanding this aversion to the actual artefact, Jebb saved the lives of millions of children through her indefatigable efforts, raising awareness that the younger generation comprised an important national asset that should be protected and nurtured.

By rummaging through letters, diaries, journals and press-clippings, Clare Mulley presents a rich profile of her subject, deftly handling Jebb’s inherent contradictions and sometimes unlikeable characteristics. This is a very personal biography, with Mulley providing insights into the biographer’s relationship with their subject, and how this is prone to challenges and frustrations.

Eglantyne Jebb was born in 1876, one of five boisterous siblings in an intellectual and prosperous Shropshire household. The potentially deleterious effects of a Conservative father were counteracted by the presence of Aunt Bun, an ardent Liberal and advocate of women’s rights. Unsurprisingly, Mr Jebb was not keen on the idea of young Eglantyne going to university, believing it would turn her into an unmarriageable bluestocking. Supported by her Aunt, herself a Newnham graduate, Eglantyne got her way, anticipating the determination that was to characterise her later achievements.

As Mulley writes, “Only two years before Eglantyne arrived at Lady Margaret Hall women had to be chaperoned to lectures and could not join a university society, or cycle on Sundays. They could still not cross a college quad alone and had to be in by ten at night unless granted special leave.” In such a circumscribed environment, this indomitable and striking character caused a stir among the other female undergraduates. One described her as “dressed in green, with golden-red curly hair and a complexion seldom found outside a novel.”

After pushing the boundaries of acceptable behaviour for Oxford gels, Eglantyne left university with a second-class degree and trained to be a teacher, one of the few career opportunities open to women at the time. Her snobbery and lack of worldliness are exposed when she comments disdainfully that her fellow trainees “wear aprons and have accents”. Although disillusioned with her initial foray into pedagogy, Eglantyne persevered, taking a post at a school for working-class girls. This proximity to children gave her little pleasure, and the strain of unwilling labour caused a breakdown and a swift exit from her nascent profession.

A move to Cambridge provided refreshment – both a change of scene and a welcome release from the lower orders. Although old-fashioned in so many ways, early-twentieth-century Cambridge offered many opportunities for the intellectually curious, and Eglantyne soon involved herself with the Charities Organisation Society, going on to write an important social survey of her new city. As Mulley observes, “For Eglantyne, poverty was neither a result of natural law or providence, nor purely a government policy issue, but a collective social responsibility that could only be addressed through the promotion of active citizenship across all social classes and generations.” Jebb’s perspicacity on local issues became part of her much grander vision.

It was at the Charities Organisation Society that Jebb met Margaret Keynes, sister to the famous economist. Eglantyne found herself drawn to this “exceedingly pretty and winsome” young woman, who shared her passion for social issues. Their opposite personalities were complementary: Eglantyne confident, yet physically frail; Margaret nervous, but unflagging in her desire to serve her new mentor. Although it is clear from letters and journals that Margaret and Eglantyne enjoyed a physical relationship, they were living at a time when lesbianism was not recognised or acknowledged. Intense female friendships were common, many of which would now be interpreted as sexual. Mulley handles the issue with admirable sensitivity, avoiding a retrospective categorisation, but at the same time acknowledging the importance of their relationship. Margaret and Eglantyne discussed their “marriage” and the possibility of buying a house together. Their plans were fully supported by Eglantyne’s mother, who wanted her daughter to be happy.

Eglantyne was indeed happy, at least until Margaret forsook her for a professor of frog anatomy. Edging towards twenty-eight, Margaret realised that a conventional marriage would provide her with children, financial security and also social acceptability. Although Eglantyne was dignified in rejection, her pain was overwhelming, no doubt compounded by Margaret’s insensitivity in expecting her approval. While Margaret embraced her new and conventional life, Eglantyne was left lonely and grieving. She confided to her diary: “I miss Margaret more and more … I miss her and I miss her, however things happen and wherever I am. This great affection of mine seems to shatter me and yet I do not believe it is wrong to feel it.”

Characteristically, Eglantyne threw herself into work as a distraction from heartache, producing a report on the humanitarian crisis in the Balkans. Her experiences led her to conclude: “It is in war itself, not in its victims, that the barbarity lies.” The horror of conflict displaced Eglantyne’s patriotism, leaving her with a passionate antipathy towards all war. She was particularly moved by the consequences for the innocent, making the irrefragable statement, “Surely it is impossible for us, as normal human beings, to watch children starve to death without making an effort to save them.” That’s exactly what she set out to do.

While many would have agreed with Eglantyne’s sentiments, she actually acted on her beliefs, establishing Save the Children with her sister Dorothy Buxton in 1919. Although the initial aim was to alleviate starving children in the aftermath of the Allied Blockade, the charity’s scope became international, helping to save millions of young lives. By the end of the following year, Eglantyne had raised the equivalent of £8m, boosted by an endorsement from Pope Benedict XV (a rare, if not unique, example of papal intervention actually helping matters). Other prominent figures also lent support, including George Bernard Shaw, who contributed the laconic but poignant statement: “I have no enemies under the age of seven”.

Eglantyne’s achievements were remarkable, especially given her persistent ill health. She suffered from heart problems, depression and vacillating energy levels, often resulting in extreme exhaustion. Now recognised as symptoms of an overactive thyroid, there was little understanding of the condition at the time. Eglantyne wrote, “In idleness it seems impossible to be happy,” the benefits of rest entirely counteracted by the stress of being rendered inactive. These periods also gave her time to reflect on the loss of Margaret, and she struggled with the “wish to escape from the personal pain of living”.  Her sheer force of will kept Eglantyne going, and she often worked from her sickbed. Eventually, however, her body was worn down and she succumbed to a stroke at the age of just fifty-two.

Her time on earth was relatively short, but Eglantyne Jebb achieved a great deal with her allotted span, saving children, redefining child welfare and writing influential social policy, all in an era when women were excluded from political life. Her legacy is particularly impressive for someone who didn’t even like children. As Mulley notes, “Eglantyne chose the universal over the particular. Her focus was not a personal, embodied child, but an unknown, universal, symbolic child, that represented social potential.” While Save the Children is one of the world’s best-known charitable organisations, Eglantyne herself remains an obscure figure, and she has not received the recognition she deserves. Mind you, Princess Anne named one of her bull terriers Eglantyne, which is perhaps the epitome of a backhanded compliment.

Mulley makes a compelling case for Eglantyne Jebb’s resurrection as an important figure. Although impressed by her subject’s achievements, Mulley never recoils from presenting the less attractive qualities, such as her snobbishness and intellectual aloofness. Eglantyne’s complex and contradictory nature is presented in an engaging narrative, embodying a perfect balance between historical context, character, and readability. Jebb was serious about her work, but never took herself too seriously, and her sense of fun permeates a book punctuated with much sadness. This unlikely children’s champion has been given overdue acknowledgement by a talented, sympathetic and insightful biographer.

The Woman Who Saved the Children: A Biography of Eglantyne Jebb by Clare Mulley is available in paperback and Kindle editions. All royalties are donated to Save the Children, so you can read a wonderful book and also help a good cause at the same time.

 

Can You Forgive Her? by Anthony Trollope (1864)

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Stephen King once rudely referred to the first Palliser novel as Can You Finish It? It’s certainly true that Trollope wasn’t known for his brevity, and this handsome new OUP edition of Can You Forgive Her? is 700 pages long. However, Trollope grapples with an ambitious range of political and social themes and, in so doing, presents a compelling and provocative narrative.

The central question raised is ‘What should a woman do with her life?’ and it is examined through expertly-drawn characters who all make very different choices. Alice Vavasor is a young woman with an independent fortune who has ended up engaged to a stuffed shirt by the name of John Grey. Although eminently respectable, Grey (as his name suggests) is interested mainly in propriety and is ill-suited to a wife who seems likely to prove a handful. Alice’s cousin and quondam lover George predicts: “He’d make an upper servant of her; very respectable, no doubt, but still only an upper servant.”

George Vavasor is the antithesis of John Grey: he lives for excitement, caring little for respectability. His financial speculations go disastrously wrong, he is disinherited by his grandfather, and he even assaults his loyal sister, Kate. George’s reckless behaviour prompted Alice to break their earlier engagement, but Kate is now determined that they should be reunited. Her motive is two-pronged: George needs Alice’s money in order to fulfil his parliamentary aspirations, and Kate wants a closer union with Alice.

As Dinah Birch discusses in her excellent introduction to this edition, Trollope hints at the idea of female marriage, with Kate effectively pursuing the courtship of Alice on her brother’s behalf. “Oh, heavens! how I envy him!”, she says when she imagines George caressing Alice. This unusual triangulation leads to a more equal marriage, with George referring to Alice as his “partner” and “a dear friend bearing the same name”. In marrying George, Alice is not obliged to change her name, thereby retaining her own identity, which otherwise would have been subsumed into that of her husband.

The plot concerning Alice has become rather overshadowed by the introduction elsewhere of two of Trollope’s most famous characters: Plantagenet and Glencora Palliser. We see Glencora as a wealthy young heiress, stultified by her arranged marriage with an austere and serious-minded husband. She is distracted by the dubious charms of the ne’er do well Burgo Fitzgerald and comes within a gnat’s whisker of breaking her wedding vows. The prospect of losing his wife to a bad ‘un rouses Palliser from his stupor and the planned elopement is foiled in a dramatic ballroom scene. Glencora “had been counselled that it was not fitting for her to love as she had thought to love, and she had resolved to give up her dream.” Essentially, she receives an early lesson in the sexual double standard. Whereas George Vavasor is able to maintain a mistress and visit prostitutes, a young woman must accept that her life is circumscribed.

Trollope’s answer to the question “what should a woman do with her life?” is “marry and have children”. There’s no other option, so they should simply stop mithering and get on with it. As Dinah Birch writes in the introduction, “In Trollope’s view, Alice’s suffering is rooted in her persistent indecision, not in the limited choices available to her.” Although she strives to resist her fate, Trollope is careful not to make her one of those pesky feminists: she was “not so far advanced as to think that women should be lawyers and doctors.” As such, her struggle is futile, as she gives no serious consideration to anything other than the status quo.

Although Trollope’s conclusion is, as ever, morally conservative, he does allow his heroines some feelings along the way. Female chastity is shown to be a matter of resistance, rather than an innate quality. He also shows through George the disastrous consequences of men being given too much liberty. His handling of relationship dynamics is incredible and his portrayal of Lady Glencora and Plantagenet Palliser’s marriage is genuinely moving, setting a keynote for the rest of the series of novels.

Yes, it’s a long book, but one in which the reader can become utterly absorbed, luxuriating in Trollope’s exquisitely-imagined world.

Lady Worsley’s Whim by Hallie Rubenhold

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Cover of Lady Worsley's Whim by Hallie RubenholdThere’s not much that surprises me these days, but Lady Worsley’s Whim managed to repeatedly elevate the papal eyebrows. The story centres around an infamous crim-con trial that took place on 21 February 1782 between Sir Richard Worsley, Governor of the Isle of Wight, and George Bisset, an officer (but not a gentleman) and one-time friend of Worsley. Despite having encouraged a close relationship between Bisset and his wife, Worsley thought it outrageous when the pair ran off together, and claimed £20,000 in damages. Already a wealthy man, the astronomical sum was designed to reduce his enemy to penury.

Sir Richard’s willingness to assign a purely financial value to the loss of his wife was entirely in character. He was a decidedly cold fish who was far more interested in collecting artefacts and bolstering his social status. Impervious to the charms of young heiress Seymour Dorothy Fleming, he had eyes only for her £70,000 fortune (equivalent to around £66m today). Once she had become Lady Worsley and divested herself of both identity and assets, Sir Richard was no longer interested in her. Lady Worsley remained a virgin until three months after their marriage, when her husband reluctantly did his duty and sired an heir.

Bored witless with little to distract her, Lady Worsley made her own entertainment. On one occasion she and two friends went on a three-day rampage, culminating in setting fire to a room in an inn:

‘How do you think they quenched the flame their own fair selves had caused? They did not call water! Water!, it was more at hand …’ these three well-bred young ladies, who had been taught to dance, embroider and lisp sweetly in French, lifted their silk skirts ‘and fairly pissed it out …’

Even this distinctly unladylike behaviour was insufficient to attract her husband’s attention.

When Sir Richard met Bisset, he thought his prayers had been answered. Here was a dashing officer who fulfilled his homosocial needs and his wife’s sexual appetites. Bisset was invited to live with the couple in a bizarre ménage à trois, with Sir Richard acting as voyeur while the other two amused themselves. He even seemed nonplussed when his wife became pregnant with Bisset’s child. This phlegmatic husband made little attempt to disguise his complicity in his wife’s liaison – at one crucial point he allowed Bisset to stand on his shoulders so he could watch the naked Lady Worsley getting dressed after a swim. This was to become ‘the most regrettable day of his life’, as we shall see.

Bisset and Lady Worsley’s relationship blossomed into love and they decided it would be quite nice to enjoy one another without her husband peering at them. They crept off into the night on 19 November 1781, taking up residence in a London hotel. Sir Richard finally discovered some virility at this point. Adultery was one thing, but his wife had destroyed the sanctity of marriage and his friend had thumbed his nose at the fraternal bond. Humiliated by his cuckold’s horns, Sir Richard invoked the full force of husbandly privilege, denying his estranged wife both money and any of her personal effects. She had only the clothes she wore on the night of the elopement and was entirely reliant on her lover, despite having provided an impressive dowry. As a wife, she had no right to her other clothes and jewels, worth an astonishing £15 million in today’s money.

The subsequent court case didn’t reflect well on anyone. As a mere woman, Lady Worsley had no right to defend herself, and the only tactic left to her was to prove she wasn’t worth the £20,000 damages claimed by Sir Richard. A seemingly endless succession of young bucks took to the witness stand to testify to having satisfied Lady Worsley’s whims, thereby branding her a worthless trollope. The judge consequently awarded damages of just one shilling, also denouncing the wronged husband as a foolish pervert. The crux of the case was his encouraging Bisset to watch his naked wife, so it was very clear that he had brought about his own downfall.

Perhaps inevitably, Bisset soon tired of his notorious lover and found himself a respectable wife.  The redoubtable Lady Worsley ended up in revolutionary Paris, embarking upon a new life and many adventures. Fortunately, Sir Richard died young enough for her to reclaim some of her fortune and find happiness with a much younger husband. Lady Worsley’s tenacity is both astonishing and humbling. Although rendered impotent by the law, she refused to tolerate the machinations of her sadistic, calculating husband. At a time when the only thing wives possessed was their virtue, she was willing to sacrifice it in order to extricate herself from an invidious position.

Hallie Rubenhold has done her subject justice by allowing her story to be heard and also setting it carefully in its historical context, thereby emphasising the remarkable nature of Lady Worsley’s actions. Rubenhold’s narrative skill is as remarkable as her subject. I found it impossible to put the book down and my knuckles were white from gripping it so tightly through all the twists and turns. The historical and legal detail is skilfully interwoven with the story, without either dominating or slowing it down. An extraordinary book about an extraordinary woman.

Lady Worsley’s Whim is available in paperback and Kindle editions.

The Somnambulist by Essie Fox

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Cover of The Somnambulist by Essie FoxImagine an intoxicating narrative with more twists and turns than Downton Abbey (without the red flags), and flashes of M R James, Sarah Waters, and Wilkie Collins. That is what Essie Fox has achieved with her debut novel, The Somnambulist, a story that continues to haunt the reader long after the final page has been reached.

Phoebe Turner is a 17-year-old girl living in the East End of London with Maud, her Evangelical Christian mother. Maud has declared implacable war on sin, campaigning for theatres and bars to be closed and an end to all fun. She disapproves of her glamorous sister Cissy who sings on the stage at Wilton’s Music Hall, although Phoebe adores her. When Cissy dies of an overdose, Phoebe is distraught and finds herself trapped in a circumscribed and impoverished world. There is a welcome turn of events when the wealthy and mysterious Nathaniel Samuels offers her a position as companion to his wife. Leaving her old life behind, Phoebe travels to Dinwood Court, the Samuels’ labyrinthine Herefordshire mansion, described disarmingly as an “idyll of peace and perfection, an oasis, an Eden, a heaven on earth.” Lydia, her laudanum-addicted mistress, is a complete recluse with a tendency to sleepwalk and mutter about her troubled past. Phoebe is inexorably drawn into the family’s dark web of lies, gradually uncovering the truth about both them and herself.

Essie Fox creates an almost unbearable level of tension, and Phoebe’s terror is at times palpable as she embarks upon a long awakening. The plot seems to follow a well-trodden path, but suddenly veers off in an entirely different direction, with the author cleverly subverting classic sensation novel tricks.

As creator of the super Virtual Victorian blog, Essie’s eye for detail is extraordinary and accurate, with her scenes vividly drawn. Fin-de-siècle London is brought to life with an eerie glow, contrasting with the dazzling opening scenes set at Wilton’s. The descriptions of Dinwood Court are a delicious Gothic confection with spookiness lurking behind every door, like a malevolent advent calendar.

The sleepwalking theme suggested by the title is cleverly adumbrated throughout the novel, with a pervading sense of ghostliness and phantasmagoria. There are more literal allusions, too, with references to Millais’ painting The Somnambulist, which recently sold at auction for a surprisingly low £75K and was said to have been inspired by The Woman in White.

The Somnambulist is an exciting, intelligent and compelling novel, and I can’t wait for the next one. Glorious.

The Somnambulist is available in hardback and Kindle editions. There’s also a stunning website to accompany the book.

Wedlock: How Georgian Britain’s Worst Husband Met His Match by Wendy Moore

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Cover of How Georgian Britain’s Worst Husband Met His Match by Wendy MooreI must confess to having been initially sceptical at the title’s claim of “worst” husband. Having spent much of the last few years rummaging through historical divorce papers, I know there are many ghastly contenders for that dubious honour. Andrew Robinson Stoney was described by his own father as “the most wretched man I ever knew”, and he was to showcase his ghastliness on Mary Eleanor Bowes, the eighteenth century’s richest heiress (and great-great-great-grandmother of the late Queen Mother).

Mary was worth around £100m in today’s money, making her a considerable prize for an intrepid fortune seeker. Although of humble origins, Stoney contrived to fight a duel over Mary’s honour, feigning a fatal injury. In his supposedly final hours, the gallant hero rasped that his dying wish was to marry Mary. Advised by three medical men that the end was nigh, Mary consented, even though she was carrying the child of Stoney’s rival. Shortly after the wedding, Stoney effected a Lazarus-like recovery, and found the strength to regularly beat his wife within an inch of her life.

The violence was relentless, with Stoney regularly pinching, kicking or slapping Mary. He warned her not to tell anyone, forcing her to tell stories of walking into doors or falling down the stairs. When displeased with her appearance, he would hack off her hair with shears. As Moore writes: “Watching her every movement, Stoney exerted control over the clothes Mary wore, the visitors she received, the conversations she held, the food that she ate, the journeys she undertook and every aspect of her daily life from morning until night with a pathological eye for detail.”
Mary’s wealth was tied up in a trust, beyond the reach of her acquisitive brute of a husband. After plotting and scheming, he bullied a befuddled and beaten Mary into signing over her fortune, thereby gaining full dominion. With a full purse, Stoney became a man about town, taking full advantage of his elevated status, while Mary remained at home, repenting her haste at leisure. To mark their first wedding anniversary on New Year’s Day, Stoney chillingly informed Mary that his resolution was to make that year even more miserable than the last.

He was as good as his word, and Mary’s life became increasingly circumscribed. She had been a talented botanist, growing an impressive range of plants and a reputation as a pioneering horticulturist. Stoney deliberately released hares to destroy her flowers, finally selling her beloved gardens and greenhouses to fund his debauched lifestyle. Stoney delighted himself with developing new forms of psychological abuse, but this did not stop him from burning his wife’s face with a candle or stabbing her in the tongue with a pen nib. His cruelty knew no bounds. The servants were powerless to intervene, and many of the maids were repeatedly raped by their depraved master.

Some readers might be incredulous that Mary tolerated such behaviour and didn’t simply remove herself from the situation. There was nothing, however, to prevent Stoney from doing exactly as he pleased. In the eighteenth century, a husband exercised complete control over the household – wife and servants alike were his property. Once Mary had been coerced into signing over her inheritance, she was completely penniless, forced even to borrow underwear from her maid. When she did finally flee the marital home, Mary had no means of supporting herself and had to leave behind her beloved children (also the property of Stoney).

Moore describes the subsequent divorce 1786 case as: “A staggering triumph, one of only sixteen cases seeking divorce on grounds of both adultery and cruelty in that decade, the result sent a clear signal to abusive husbands and a message of hope to abused wives everywhere.” Stoney was not a man to accept defeat, and the divorce proved to be only the beginning of the end. The redoubtable Mary was to suffer abduction, further violence, and humiliation.

As the title suggests, Mary ultimately triumphs, although not without enduring unimaginable suffering. I was lost in admiration at her endurance and tenacity in the face of such torture. Her willingness to defy convention and publicly denounce her husband’s abuse resulted in three court rulings that influenced women’s rights campaigns in the nineteenth century. Progress was slow, with protection against violent husbands instituted in 1878 and financial autonomy for wives in 1882, nearly 100 years after Mary’s one-woman struggle.

It is surprising that Mary Bowes is little known outside the annals of marriage law. The man who tormented her has been immortalised as Thackeray’s Barry Lyndon, and his lack of financial acumen has given us the term “stoney broke”. Wendy Moore is to be applauded, therefore, for giving this heroic woman the recognition she deserves. The story is absolutely gripping and I found myself exhausted and slightly stunned when reaching its conclusion. The historical context is well-balanced and impeccably researched: everything is contextualised without losing any of the cracking pace. Stories don’t get much more sensational than this, but Mary’s suffering is handled with great sensitivity. Wendy Moore is undoubtedly one of the very best writers of narrative non-fiction. The harrowing subject matter means that Wedlock is not an easy read, but it’s the story of remarkable woman, brilliantly told.

Wedlock: How Georgian Britain’s Worst Husband Met His Match by Wendy Moore is available in both paperback and Kindle editions.

The English Marriage: Tales of Love, Money and Adultery by Maureen Waller

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Cover of The English Marriage by Maureen WallerFollowing his umpteenth divorce, Rod Stewart remarked that he wouldn’t get married again – he would simply find a (presumably blonde) woman he didn’t like very much and give her a house. Reading Maureen Waller’s The English Marriage, I can’t say I blame him. There is very little love to be found in these pages, rather an abundance of violence, infidelity, and fraud. Each chapter focuses on a particular marriage and the outrage it embodied, whether it be wife-sale (yes, Hardy wasn’t making it up), bigamy, or old-fashioned adultery. These stories are interspersed with enlightening extracts from conduct manuals. My favourite of these is clergyman William Gouge’s Domesticall Duties (1622), which decrees that a married woman must maintain “an inward, wife-like fear”.

This quote provoked much snorting from my own spouse, but it is easy to forget that no sense of irony was meant at the time. Until 1882, a married woman had no separate legal existence and all that she owned belonged to her husband. Before 1870, she didn’t even have a right to her own earnings. It was a man’s duty to support his family, a responsibility for which he was rewarded with the power to chastise them in any way he saw fit.

Perhaps the clearest illustration of the inequitable position of women in the mid-Victorian period is that of Susannah Palmer. Her husband repeatedly used her as a punchbag, regularly blackening her eyes and knocking out her teeth. After years of suffering such relentless brutality, she absconded with the children and managed to support them single-handedly. Once she was settled, her husband tracked them down, seizing and selling all the possessions she had worked hard to acquire. Not content with parasitism, he attacked her while she was preparing her children’s supper. While he was clouting her around the head, she inflicted a slight cut on his hand. Outraged at this insubordination, he immediately summoned her for “cutting and wounding” him and she was sent to Newgate prison (where she expressed perfect contentment, being at a safe distance from her husband’s fists).

The great libertarian J S Mill lamented the fact that theft was punished more severely than wife-beating. But, as Waller glumly acknowledges: “it all came down to property in the end. A man mistreated his wife because he believed she was his possession to do what he liked with.” The passing of the Matrimonial Causes (Divorce) Act of 1857 didn’t make it much easier for women to extricate themselves from a violent husband (he would also have to commit adultery), but the establishment of the Divorce Court did expose abusive marriages to public scrutiny, exploding the myth that wife-beating was confined to the hoi polloi. Queen Victoria complained that it was no longer safe for a family to read the newspaper at the breakfast table, such was the lurid nature of many reports.
Given this impressive book spans more than 500 years, the reader occasionally craves more detail on a particular topic. However, Waller achieves a magisterial sweep through the history of marriage, deftly illustrating its landmarks with seminal cases and the often heart-breaking stories of those who laboured under the considerable weight of an indissoluble union. Waller handles her material with great sensitivity, never forgetting the pain that underlies the sensational headlines. Overall, she argues, access to divorce is vital if the institution of marriage is to survive.
This roll-call of unhappiness notwithstanding, lovers are not shunning matrimony. Despite his earlier cynicism, Rod Stewart is now married for the third time. As Waller concludes: “Love triumphs and hope springs eternal.”

The English Marriage: Tales of Love, Money and Adultery by Maureen Waller is available in both paperback and Kindle editions.

Magnificent Obsession: Victoria, Albert and the Death that Changed the Monarchy by Helen Rappaport

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Cover of Magnificent Obsession by Helen RappaportOne hundred and fifty years ago today, Queen Victoria and her subjects were plunged into mourning following the untimely demise of the Prince Consort. Albert’s death threw an enormous wet blanket over the social season, with the cancellation of balls, concerts, and soirees. For appearances’ sake, Charles Dickens was obliged to postpone a lucrative series of public readings, which must have really smarted.

Those of more modest means that the Inimitable Boz wondered how on earth they would afford to put their families in mourning. Manufacturers, meanwhile, rubbed their hands with glee, greedily anticipating a boost to their profits as the trade in commemorative items and dark-coloured clothing boomed. It’s an ill wind.

Although normal life was soon resumed for the nation, Victoria’s life had stopped on 14 December 1861. As Helen Rappaport notes: “Like Dickens’s Miss Havisham, she had no desire to move forward but only to remain in stasis, locked into that terrible moment of loss, in perpetuity.” The Prologue describes exactly what the Queen had lost: a blissfully happy marriage (at least from her point of view) and the stability of an intelligent, supportive husband. With arguably the most demanding job in the country, and nine children, Victoria relied on her husband to take care of domestic affairs: “Quite simply, he was all in all to her: surrogate father, husband, best friend, wise counsel, amanuensis and teacher — King in all but name.”

The description of the family’s last Christmas together is both beautiful and moving, brought to life by Rappaport’s sumptuous prose.

The chandeliers had to be taken down specially to accommodate the larger ornamental trees, which were securely suspended from the ceiling, their bases resting on the table. The ten rows of symmetrical branches of these trees were decorated with edible fancies: sweetmeats, little cakes, fancy French bonbons, gilt walnuts — and gingerbreads whose delicious aroma filled the air — the effect completed with coloured ribbons and wax tapers and a frosting of artificial snow and icicles. At each tree-top stood a Christmas angel of Nuremberg glass, its outstretched wings holding a wreath in each hand.

This poignant event is contrasted with Christmas 1878, where the still-grieving Victoria is contending with the death of her daughter, Princess Alice, who also passed away on 14th December.

As Rappaport shows, Queen Victoria formed an addiction to mourning and, more specifically, to the sympathy it allowed her to demand from family and servants. Whereas most widows would have thrown off their weeds after a couple of years, Victoria maintained hers for nearly two decades, refusing to perform public duties she thought inappropriate to a bereaved woman. It is this image of the grim-faced, black-clad matriarch that has endured, rather than the lively, playful young queen of her early reign.

It suits most historians to claim that Victoria remained the reclusive Widow of Windsor for the rest of her days, thereby overlooking her considerable industry during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Rappaport, conversely, describes how Victoria finally emerged from the shadow of death and found the courage to go on, realising at last that she possessed the skills necessary to be a great monarch: “her natural intelligence, the force of her indomitable personality and her great powers of endurance.”

Rappaport’s frustration with Queen Victoria is palpable at certain points, which is unsurprising given the monarch’s breathtaking solipsism and self-indulgence. No reader can fail to feel anger at her refusal to believe that Albert was ill, simply because it was inconvenient to her and distracted attention from her own preoccupations.

This account is scholarly, yet compelling and highly readable. The story is placed in unobtrusive, meticulous historical context, and the archival research is impeccable. Although much has been written about Victoria’s long reign, it has seldom reached this superlative standard. Rarely have I encountered a book that has satisfied in so many different respects.

Magnificent Obsession: Victoria, Albert and the Death that Changed the Monarchy  by Helen Rappaport. Also available in a Kindle edition. Victorian Secrets publishes Helen Rappaport’s No Place for Ladies: The Untold Story of Women in the Crimean War.

New collection of short stories by Barbara Hardy

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We’re delighted to announce a new collection of short stories by distinguished literary critic Barbara Hardy.

Dorothea’s Daughter is based on novels by Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, and Thomas Hardy. They are postscripts, rather than sequels, entering into dialogues with the original narratives by developing suggestions in the text. The authors’ conclusions are respected, with no changes made to the plot; instead, Barbara Hardy draws out loose threads in the original fabric to weave new material, imagining moments in the characters’ future lives.

To find out more, please visit the Dorothea’s Daughter webpage.

New critical edition of The Autobiography of Christopher Kirkland

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We’re very pleased to announce a new critical edition of Eliza Lynn Linton’s autobiography-in-drag, The Autobiography of Christopher Kirkland, edited by Deborah T. Meem and Kate Holterhoff.

In this astonishing work of literary transvestism, Linton adopts a male persona in order to recount her loss of faith at an early age, her sexual relationships with other women, and her disastrous marriage to the engraver William Linton. She told her publisher, George Bentley: “I have put my very Soul, my life into these pages.” In later life, she said it as “an outpour no one hears me make by word of mouth, a confession of sorrow, suffering, trial, and determination not to be beaten, which few suspect is the underlying truth of my life.”

This edition is completely reset and includes: an introduction, explanatory footnotes, contemporary reviews, extracts from George Layard’s biography of Linton, and extracts from Linton’s novel Sowing the Wind.

To find out more, please visit The Autobiography of Christopher Kirkland webpage.

New edition of F. Anstey’s Vice Versâ

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We’re pleased to announce a new critical edition of F. Anstey’s comic novel Vice Versâ – a story so funny, it is famed for causing Trollope’s fatal stroke (to the modern reader, that could be either an endorsement or a terrible warning).

First published in 1882, Vice Versâ shows the disastrous consequences of having one’s wishes granted. After delivering a pompous lecture to his son Dick, stuffy Paul Bultitude declares his wish to be a schoolboy once more so he can enjoy the carefree existence of youth. Unfortunately for him, he happens to be clutching the mysterious and magical Garudâ stone, and suddenly finds himself transformed into the diminutive body of his son. Dick quickly uses the stone to his own advantage, assuming his father’s portly character and swapping roles. While Dick gets the opportunity to run his father’s business in the City and wreak havoc on the household, Paul must endure the privations of the brutal boarding school he forced young Dick to attend. Determined not to lose his dignity, Paul retains his former bombastic demeanour, leading to a series of hilarious episodes with the cane-wielding Dr Grimstone.

This new scholarly edition includes a comprehensive critical introduction by Peter Merchant, author biography, explanatory footnotes, and a wealth of contextual material. To find out more, please visit the Vice Versâ page.

A Mummer’s Wife by George Moore

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Cover of A Mummer's Wife by George MooreA Mummer’s Wife (1885) was my first introduction to George Moore, and I found myself captivated by this intriguing literary figure, who attracted praise and censure in equal measure.  W B Yeats found the novel so shocking that he forbade his sister to read it, and the conservative press was almost unanimous in condemning its “coarseness”.

Moore’s novel tells the story of Kate Ede, a bored Midlands housewife unhappily married to an asthmatic draper.  When Dick Lennox, a handsome travelling actor, comes to lodge with her family, Kate succumbs to temptation, with disastrous consequences.  Moore describes in almost unbearable detail Kate’s sense of claustrophobia, disillusionment,  and subsequent ignominious descent into alcoholism.  124 years after it was first published, A Mummer’s Wife retains its ability to shock.

A Mummer’s Wife is a significant novel both in terms of its sensational content and within the context of literary censorship.  Mudie’s decision to ban the novel from his famous circulating library prompted a virulent attack by Moore in his pamphlet Literature at Nurse (included as an appendix to this edition). Moore defends the sexual content of his novel, comparing it with some of the sensation fiction approved by Mudie, and arguing that works by Ouida and Florence Marryat were far racier.

The novel begins with Kate’s husband Ralph suffering a severe asthma attack.  Although she performs her wifely duty in looking after him, Kate endures endless provocation from her puritanical mother-in-law.  Kate’s circumscribed existence in the manufacturing town of Hanley is vividly portrayed and there is a palpable sense of ennui.
The arrival of Dick Lennox and his theatre company suddenly opens Kate’s eyes to a world beyond her own sphere of existence, and it is the work of a moment for the handsome actor to seduce the lonely draper’s wife.  Freed from the restrictions of her former life, Kate also discovers a talent for acting and reinvents herself as an actress.  Being a mummer’s wife, however, is not quite what she expected, and Kate soon becomes disillusioned with the travelling life.  She takes to drink, and a tantalising glimpse of her former security sends her into an inexorable decline.

A Mummer’s Wife is a fictional assault on romantic fiction, showing all too clearly the dangers of extra-marital liaisons, and highlighting the deleterious effects of novels such as Flaubert’s Madame Bovary on impressionable female minds.  Although highly critical of women novelists in Literature at Nurse, Moore goes much further with his anti-heroine than Florence Marryat or Rhoda Broughton would have ever dared.  Through Kate, Moore relentlessly exposes and upholds the sexual double standard, thus making the novel an often uncomfortable read.  In so doing, however, he shows with exquisitely-drawn realism, that the consequences of adultery were far more devastating for women.  A Mummer’s Wife is shocking and depressing, but ultimately a novel of extraordinary power.

New edition of A Mummer’s Wife

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We are pleased to announce a new critical edition of George Moore’s controversial novel, A Mummer’s Wife. First published in 1885, the novel tells the story of Kate Ede, a bored Midlands housewife unhappily married to an asthmatic draper. When a handsome travelling actor comes to lodge with her family, Kate succumbs to temptation, with disastrous consequences.

The shocking themes of alcoholism and adultery led to the novel being banned by Mudie’s, thus initiating a war of attrition between Moore and the circulating libraries. In his introduction to this edition, Anthony Patterson considers Moore’s work in the context of literary production and censorship, and also examines the novel’s themes.

This completely reset edition also includes:

  • a preface by Moore’s biographer, Professor Adrian Frazier
  • critical introduction, author biography and explanatory footnotes by Anthony Patterson
  • the full text of Literature at Nurse, Moore’s polemic pamphlet in which he attacked the Grundyism of the circulating libraries.
  • extracts from Moore’s A Communication to My Friends, in which he describes his first meeting with publisher Henry Vizetelly and the evolution of “A Mummer’s Wife”
  • Moore’s preface to Zola’s Piping Hot!
  • an excerpt from the autobiography of Jimmy Glover, whose experiences as an actor influenced the novel

For more information, please visit:

http://victoriansecrets.co.uk/books/a-mummers-wife/

New edition of Notable Women Authors of the Day

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We are very pleased to announce the release of Helen C. Black’s Notable Women Authors of the Day.

First published in 1893, Notable Women Authors of the Day began life as a series of interviews published in the popular women’s magazine the Lady’s Pictorial. The 30 featured authors were among the most successful of the late nineteenth century, and many were household names.

The interviews offer a tantalising glimpse into the life the Victorian woman writer, revealing the challenges of balancing their personal and professional lives. Helen C. Black describes the author and her home, sharing with the reader details of domestic arrangements and writing habits.   Told in the second person, the interviews create an immediacy and intimacy between the authors and the reader.

This new edition is based on the 1906 text, including the original portraits, along with a wealth of new material:

  • preface by Troy J. Bassett on Helen C. Black and the Lady’s Pictorial
  • critical introduction
  • explanatory footnotes
  • updated profiles on the Notable Women
  • suggestions for further reading

For more information, and for details on how to order copies, please visit:

http://victoriansecrets.co.uk/books/notable-women-authors-of-the-day/

 

Demos by George Gissing

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Demos by George GissingBigamy, bisexuality, and betrayal form the sensational plot of Demos (1886), the third published novel from super-grump George Gissing. Although the novel’s sub-title – ‘A Story of English Socialism’ – doesn’t make it sound terribly exciting, politics and social unrest form the backdrop, and the foreground narrative is both tight and compelling.

George Orwell, perhaps anticipating Twitter, pithily described Demos as “a story of the moral and intellectual corruption of a working-class Socialist who inherits a fortune.” The Socialist in question is Dick Mutimer, a serious-minded mechanic who leaves behind his old life and in a slum district of London without the least compunction. Meanwhile, the presumed heir to the fortune, aesthete Hubert Eldon, returns from the Continent with a mysterious bullet wound and discovers that his comfortable position has been usurped by a rough young parvenu. Mutimer uses his new-found wealth to establish an ironworks and model village in the fictional Midlands town of Wanley, and is able to realise his long-held dream of improving the lot of Demos – the working man.

Mutimer’s project turns the “land of meadows and orchard” into an “igneous realm” with its “hundred and fifty fire-vomiting blast furnaces.” Everything, including the landscape, must be subordinate to the needs of Demos.
Not content with assuming Eldon’s wealth, Mutimer also covets his intended wife, the ingenue Adela Waltham. Adela is a “martyr to her mother’s miserable calculations”: once Mrs Waltham realises Eldon has no prospects, she coerces her daughter into accepting Mutimer’s proposal, even though they are ill-suited. Adela endures an unhappy marriage to a brutal and solipsistic man, and is thoroughly miserable until she is awoken, both sexually and spiritually, by the bewitching Stella Westlake.

Stella is one of the novel’s most intriguing characters: a pre-Raphaelite beauty, exuding charm, pheromones and quiet intelligence. She is based on William Morris’s wife, Jane, although I haven’t as yet established whether it’s an authentic portrait. The rest of the cast are all largely unlikeable, but also gruesomely compelling. Although he denies the reader a central hero, Gissing does at least have the decency to ensure that the good ultimately triumph and the wicked meet with a sticky end. It’s a shame the good have to suffer so much along the way, but it wouldn’t be Gissing without a liberal dose of misery. His description of the “chill desolation” of Manor Park Cemetery has been described as one of the most beautiful passages in English literature; it is also one of the most poignant.

Demos is Gissing’s fictional response to rapid social change. Hubert Eldon fears the 20th century, believing it to be the era of Demos, a ravening beast that will devour everything in its path. He is partly a mouthpiece for the author. Gissing was an inveterate snob who was fiercely critical of anyone getting ideas above their station. However, he also ardently believed that the workers should be treated much better, fiercely denouncing those who exploited the poor and the vulnerable.

Demos is exquisite, dramatic, and at times painful. Those familiar with Gissing’s first novel, Workers in the Dawn, will see in it his development as an author, as he gradually hones his craft. The success of the plot is perhaps demonstrated by the fact that Demos is the only Gissing novel to have been adapted into a Hollywood film. I’m quietly hopeful that the BBC will spot the dramatic potential of New Grub Street and The Nether World as an antidote to the tweeness of some recent adaptations. No doubt Cranford could be livened up considerably by an outbreak of biting and Miss Matty succumbing to drug addiction.

Gissing’s own verdict on Demos was: “In my private opinion, Demos is distinctly ahead of anything since George Eliot ceased to write.” There’s a tiny nugget of humility, if you really look for it. The author’s trumpet-blowing aside, Demos is certainly one of the finest literary achievements of the early Fin de Siècle.

Victorian Secrets publishes George Gissing’s Demos, Thyrza, and Workers in the Dawn.

New edition of Demos by George Gissing

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We are pleased to announce a new critical edition of George Gissing’s Demos, edited by Debbie Harrison.

Demos tells the story of London mechanic and ardent socialist Richard Mutimer, who unexpectedly inherits a fortune at the expense of the presumed heir, aristocratic Hubert Eldon. Mutimer leaves behind his old life to establish a model village for ironworkers in the idyllic Midland town of Wanley. He also deserts the girl who loves him, as he seeks to assume the social status of the middle-class capitalists he once despised.

This edition includes:

A preface by Pierre Coustillas; a critical introduction and notes by Debbie Harrison; suggestions for further reading; George Gissing biography & chronology; an appendix on the politics of Demos.

For more information, please see the Demos webpage.

New edition of The Light that Failed by Rudyard Kipling

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We are pleased to announce a new critical edition of Rudyard Kipling’s semi-autobiographical first novel, The Light that Failed.

The Light that Failed tells the story of war artist Dick Heldar, his doomed love for childhood sweetheart Maisie, and his descent into blindness. Through Dick, Kipling considers the relationship between art and life, espousing his belief that the artist has a duty to paint only what he knows to be true.

This edition, edited by Paul Fox, includes: introduction, biography of Kipling, suggestions for further reading, explanatory footnotes, the alternative “happy ending” from the serialised version.

For more information, please see the our web page for The Light that Failed.

Madame Tussaud and the History of Waxworks

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Cover of Madame Tussaud and the History of Waxworks by Pamela PilbeamA paradoxical disadvantage of the Kindle’s long battery life is that I often forget to charge it before train journeys and find myself facing a blank screen. The last such episode proved felicitous, as it prompted me to buy Madame Tussaud and the History of Waxworks from the wonderful £2 bookshop opposite the British Library. Although I visited Madame Tussaud’s several times as a tiny geek, I hadn’t given it much thought since, but Pamela Pilbeam’s superb study has awakened my interest. The book is part biography of Tussaud herself, and part cultural history of waxworks.

Modern waxworks originated in the 1770s with two Parisian exhibitions managed by Phillipe Curtius. He trained young Marie Grosholz (later Tussaud), possibly his illegitimate daughter, and she inherited the business after his death. Although she was later to become an astonishingly successful businesswoman, Marie’s early career was spent modelling the victims of the Terror in Revolutionary France. In her memoirs she claimed to have sat with bloody heads on her knees, taking impressions of their (presumably contorted) features. For subjects who had the good fortune to still be intact, Marie covered their faces with a plaster of Paris mask, inserting straws or quills into their nostrils to allow them to breathe. In one case, Marie forgot the straws and nearly ended up with another corpse. Pilbeam observes that waxworks became a way of normalising the violence of the 1790s, as people became accustomed to bloody images. Marie later maintained that the painter David used her wax model of Marat for his famous bath-tub murder scene.

Once the worst of the Terror was over, Marie married François Tussaud, a civil engineer eight years her junior, and soon had three children. Unfortunately, Tussaud seemed mainly interested in spending her money and Marie was obliged to protect her property from him. An invitation to tour Britain provided her with an opportunity to extricate herself from an exploitative marriage.

Marie marketed herself in Britain as someone au fait with senior politicians and French royalty, and this gave her traveling show a cachet denied to fairground exhibits. The British were intrigued by this exotic woman and flocked to see her curious waxworks. As her popularity grew, French marriage law changed and wives lost all control over their property and earnings, with a working woman’s wages paid to her husband. Marie simply refused to send the proceeds of her industry to François, taking advantage of his inertia. She was wise to do so, as he was rapidly demolishing the business she had left behind in Paris.

Marie’s tireless energy and appetite for self-promotion quickly raised her profile to the extent that she was invited to model the royal family in 1808. Her alacrity and attention to detail in chronicling current events ensured returning audiences. Visitors were encouraged to touch the waxworks, giving them the opportunity to feel part of history and an affinity with figures they could never hope to meet in real life. Marie was always perched in a cubicle, taking the money and keeping a careful eye on everything. The exhibition was aimed squarely at the middle and upper classes, the cost and opening hours designed to deter riff-raff.

The tour continued for an exhausting 33 years, initially with a young family in tow. In 1835, at the age of 74, Marie finally found a permanent base for her models: the Baker Street Bazaar in London. She got herself established just in time to design an intricate representation of Queen Victoria’s coronation in 1837, complete with papier maché of the interior of Westminster Abbey. Queen Victoria’s wedding two years later provided another spectacle, with Marie commissioning an exact copy of the silk bridal gown. Tussaud’s ‘Adjoining Room’ was used for rather less celebratory events, and was dubbed the “Chamber of Horrors” by Punch in 1846. Marie would often purchase the entire contents of murder scenes, and some villains due to be executed would donate clothing for their waxy selves. As Judith Flanders has recently shown in The Invention of Murder, there was endless demand for vicarious sensation in an era when homicide was relatively rare.

As famous as her exhibits, Punch declared Marie “one of the national ornaments of the feminine species” and Dickens immortalised her as Mrs Jarley in The Old Curiosity Shop. The Dickensian portrait, although good publicity, wasn’t entirely flattering, and Marie also attracted considerable censure for her lavish displays and glorification of death at a time when Irish peasants were dying in their thousands. Business remained brisk, however, and Marie was in a position to decline a large offer from the fairground entrepreneur Barnum. François also started greedily eyeing the profits, so Marie transferred the business to her sons and out of the grasp of her importunate husband.

Marie died in 1850, in her 90th year and working almost until the end. Such had been her success that it was rumoured she was buried wearing jewels worth £50K. Two robbers broke into her coffin but were foiled when they accidentally pulled a bell rope. Oops. The business that bore her name continued virtually unchanged in the first few decades following her death. 1851, the year of the Great Exhibition, saw nearly 1 million visitors, and Madam Tussaud’s was the most successful tourist destination in the country. In 1883, the exhibition moved to its current home on Marylebone Road, and the building was rumoured to have cost £80,000 (tens of millions in today’s money). Subsequent financial problems meant that the family sold the business for £173,000 in 1889, although many of them remained on the payroll. The basic premise of the show remained intact: recreating current and historical events and appealing to the public’s desire to get up close and personal with famous people without the risk of getting a slap. The Chamber of Horrors remained gruesome, the Tussauds even purchasing the sweet a baby was sucking when it was brutally murdered. Yes, quite. After changing hands, Tussaud’s did start trying to broaden its appeal across class boundaries, including models of political activists and radical politicians. In the new century, they displayed four of the suffragette leaders and placed them facing the Asquith government. Annie Kenney protested that the ministers might melt under their combined glare.

Tussaud’s continues to be both popular and topical, although these days I hardly recognise any of the latest additions. Pilbeam carefully documents the laborious work involved in creating a modern waxwork: two days to make the eyes, with silk threads used for the veins; 35 hours to colour the head (they must have saved considerable time with David Cameron); and 140 hours to construct a head of hair, each hair being sewn in separately. Such a wealth of detail is what makes this book so enjoyable and compelling. Pilbeam has carried out extensive research and presented it in a scholarly, yet accessible, way. I can’t say it has made me want to visit Madame Tussaud’s again, but it has given me an appreciation for the waxworks, and enormous respect for the extraordinary woman who created them.

Madame Tussaud and the History of Waxworks by Pamela Pilbeam

The Light that Failed by Rudyard Kipling

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Cover of The Light that Failed by Rudyard KiplingI must confess to never having been a big fan of Kipling – tales of empire and derring-do aren’t quite my cup of tea.  However, his first novel, The Light that Failed (1891), has proved to be a revelation, and quite unlike any of Kipling’s subsequent work.

The novel is partly autobiographical and tells the story of war artist Dick Heldar, his doomed relationship with childhood sweetheart Maisie, and his descent into blindness.  Through Dick, Kipling considers the relationship between art and life, espousing his belief that the artist has a duty to paint only what he knows to be true.  In this respect, the author offers a counterpoint to the conspicuous aestheticism of Oscar Wilde’s contemporaneous The Picture of Dorian Gray.  Dick’s trouble begins when he refuses to accept reality, pursuing instead a romantic ideal.
Reality is vividly portrayed by Kipling, from the battlefields of Sudan and fleshpits of Port Said, through to the drab streets of London.  These near-Naturalistic depictions led to comparisons with Zola, and unfavourable reviews from critics who were revolted by Kipling’s sometimes gruesome detail.  Others recognised the novel’s extraordinary power, Murray’s Magazine commenting: “Mr Kipling’s novel is a very remarkable tour de force. His genius makes him write at fever-heat, and we long for some passages of repose in his rapid, breathless narrative.  The genius, however, is incontestable.”

The Light that Failed is dominated by Dick’s hopeless longing for fellow artist Maisie and his refusal to relinquish her, even though she is in a lesbian relationship with a woman only ever referred to dismissively as the “red-haired girl”.  This plot strand is based on Kipling’s own doomed love for Florence Garrard, who repeatedly rejected him and lived with another female artist.  Kipling exacts his revenge on this love rival in a spiteful episode towards the end of the novel, and his disappointment permeates the narrative, manifesting itself in an undertow of misogyny.  As such, The Light that Failed could be seen as an anti-New Woman novel, criticising as it does the new breed of independent career-minded women who eschew the restrictions of marriage.

Blindness is a common metaphor for impotence, and the loss of his eyesight reflects the emasculation felt by Dick when confronted with the consequences of the emancipated woman.  He is determined to finish his masterpiece ‘Melancholia’ before he goes completely blind, inspired by Dürer’s famous engraving, Melencolia I.  Dick’s painting shows a woman laughing in the face of life’s difficulties, embodying his pursuit of stoic dignity against all odds.  This is contrasted with frequent references to James Thomson’s poem, The City of Dreadful Night (1874), in which depression and pessimism triumph.  Although often bleak, the narrative is regularly leavened by Kipling’s wit and eye for comic detail.

Much of the criticism levelled at The Light that Failed was due to its unhappy ending.  Mindful of readers’ expectations, Lippincott’s Magazine, who originally serialised the novel, demanded from Kipling an alternative ‘happy’ ending, which is included as an appendix to this edition.  Although undeniably more optimistic, it is inferior to the original, and Kipling makes clear in a short preface to the novel that he favoured the gloomy and more powerful conclusion.  In his introduction, Paul Fox places the novel within the context of fin-de-siècle literature, and considers its key themes of masculinity, aestheticism, and the relationship between art and life.

The Light that Failed is an enthralling and thought-provoking novel, and shows a very different Kipling from the one so famous for his Anglo-Indian stories.

  • For more details on the autobiographical elements of the novel, see an article by Jad Adams, Kipling’s most recent biographer.

New edition of East of Suez

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Victorian Secrets is pleased to annouce a new critical edition of Alice Perrin’s East of Suez.

Originally published in 1901, East of Suez was Perrin’s first collection of short stories.  Her fascinating and thought-provoking tales of Anglo-Indian life rival the best work of Kipling, and were hugely successful in their day.  Perrin tells stories of illicit love and betrayal set against a beautifully-drawn backdrop of the mystical east, interweaving the supernatural with exquisite details of her characters’ lives.  As the Times wrote in her obituary: “She wrote a simple, unforced style, and the reader feels keenly the heat, the dust, the moonrise, the night calls, and all the sights and sounds and smells of the unchanging East.”

This edition includes a scholarly introduction by Melissa Makala, author biography, suggestions for further reading, explanatory notes, contextual material on the British Raj, and original illustrations from the serialisation of the stories.

For more information, please visit the East of Suez webpage.

The Invention of Murder by Judith Flanders

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Cover of The Invention of Murder by Judith FlandersFeeling bereft after finishing Barchester Towers, I was saved from despair by the timely arrival of the postman clutching a copy of Judith Flanders’ The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Revelled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime. Although squeamish by nature, I am intrigued by the Victorian fascination with murder and how it was represented through newsprint and popular culture, particularly sensation fiction. Flanders achieves a panoramic sweep through journalism, novels, broadsides, ballads, and theatre, engaging with both well-known and relatively obscure sources, and in the process unearthing a few hitherto unknown facts or connections.

The Victorian period was both metaphorically and literally dark. As Flanders observes, the lack of street-lighting for much of the nineteenth century meant that many neighbourhoods were plunged into complete darkness at night, thereby creating the perfect environment for those with murderous intent. Although fear was widespread, murder had become reassuringly rare, allowing people to indulge in the thrill of the crime without risk of being faced with its gruesome reality. The proliferation of newsprint fed this appetite for vicarious terror, with even the Times indulging in melodrama and in one case offering its readers the opportunity to buy the court model of a murder reconstruction. Such three-dimensional representations abounded – after the infamous Red Barn murder of 1827, Staffordshire pottery figures were produced of the perpetrator, Corder, and the victim, Maria Marten. The high cost of such items showed that the rich were just as obsessed with murder as the poor. Those unable to afford expensive knick-knacks could instead watch a dramatisation of the case. An early 1860s performance even featured the Bow Street runner who apprehended Corder recreating his arrest live on stage.

Endless press coverage provided rich fodder for sensation novelists, whose recycling of cases was no less exploitative than that of the potters and impresarios. Flanders surveys an impressively wide range of fiction, from the household name of Wilkie Collins to forgotten writers such as Matilda Charlotte Hostoun, who fictionalised the Road Hill House murder in Such Things Are, and Caroline Clive, who in Paul Ferroll created an unforgettably sinister villain.  Using archival material, she shows how real-life cases inspired many plots, with the fictional portrayal sometimes replacing reality in the public imagination. Flanders rightly concludes that quality varied, with Mary Elizabeth Braddon ranging from the zenith of Lady Audley’s Secret to the nadir of One Life, One Love:

… a story of the Paris Commune, double-identity, heroines regularly going mad and a plot so confusing that there is no real resolution, because I strongly suspect, the author could not quite work out what had happened, and understandably did not want to read it over again.

Of course, theatrical and literary representations of murder are several steps removed from grim corporeality. However, public executions of murderers were also popular entertainment, and nearly 30,000 people filed past the hanged body of the Resurrectionist Burke. A wallet was subsequently made from his scalp, and those with a taste for the truly morbid can view it in Edinburgh’s History of Surgery Museum. Such spectacles were big business, with traders plying a roaring trade in broadsides, grisly souvenirs and themed comestibles. Crowds eagerly watching the hanging of cabinet-maker James Greenacre, who murdered and dismembered his lover, were able to sustain themselves with Greenacre tarts (ingredients, fortunately, unknown).

Although Flanders provides full descriptions of many notable murders, her treatment is never gratuitous and she avoids potentially stomach-churning details. Victims remain human and are afforded respect; their killers are never glorified. Flanders’ dry wit also introduces much-needed levity into what could otherwise be a succession of bleak episodes. Other reviewers have criticised the book’s lack of cohesion or argument, but for me, this is its strength. Flanders synthesises a wealth of material, and there is no attempt to formulate the reader’s response or to draw simplistic parallels with twenty-first-century discourses on murder. The Invention of Murder is scholarly, engaging and comprehensive, allowing the reader to experience the multifaceted Victorian representation of murder from the safety of their armchair.

Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope

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Cover of Barchester Towers by Anthony TrollopeAlthough readers often struggle with The Warden, their efforts are amply rewarded by Barchester Towers (1857), the next novel in the Barset Chronicles. The story begins with the death of the Bishop, followed by a great deal of manoeuvering amongst those who seek to fill the much-coveted position. The triumphant candidate is Thomas Proudie, although it is his wife who wears the cassock in their household. Mrs Proudie – the “Medea of Barchester” – is perhaps Trollope’s most famous character and one of his finest comic creations. The plot mainly concerns her battles with the ambitious and oleaginous Obadiah Slope, who is determined to bend the Bishop to his will. The confrontations between Mrs Proudie and Slope are brilliantly drawn and sublimely funny. Bishop Proudie himself is a study in inertia and simply defers to whichever of the two rivals happens to be in the ascendant.

Not content with seeking political advantage, Slope also resolves to secure for himself an advantageous marriage, having no mean opinion of his appeal to the opposite sex. He has his evil eye on Eleanor Bold, the recently widowed and wealthy daughter of Septimus Hardy, but is distracted by the specious charms of Signora Madeline Vesey Neroni. Although permanently crippled by her estranged husband, Madeline proves irresistible to the men of Barchester, much to the disgust of their womenfolk, and uses her power to deadly and comic effect. Slope is no match for her, or indeed for any of the other formidable women he attempts to conquer. It takes a hard slap in the face from Eleanor to convince him that his attentions are unwelcome.

Eleanor Bold is one of Trollope’s strongest female characters. Independently wealthy, she is “fair game to be hunted down by hungry gentlemen”, but bats them away vigorously, refusing to accept that she should be grateful for proposals from importunate suitors. Eleanor shows dignity, courage, and spirit beyond that permitted to many Victorian heroines. It is unfortunate, therefore, that Trollope ultimately reduces her to wifely submission when she finally does remarry:

She has found the strong shield that should guard her from all wrongs, the trusty pilot that should henceforward guide her through the shoals and rocks. She would give up the heavy burden of her independence, and once more assume the position of a woman and the duties of a trusting and loving wife.

Possibly Trollope lost his nerve and decided that leaving Eleanor independent and happy at the novel’s conclusion would create an alarming precedent.

His portrayal of Madeline remains radical, however. There are relatively few clear depictions of marital violence in nineteenth-century fiction, but Trollope makes little attempt to obfuscate Madeline’s sufferings:

She had fallen, she said, in ascending a ruin, and had fatally injured the sinews of her knee; so fatally that when she stood, she lost eight inches of her accustomed height; so fatally that when she essayed to move, she could only drag herself painfully along, with protruded hip and extended foot, in a manner less graceful than that of a hunchback. She had consequently made up her mind, once and forever, than she would never stand and never attempt to move herself. Stories were not slow to follow her, averring that she had been cruelly ill-used by Neroni, and that to his violence had she owed her accident.

Trollope’s handling of such a harrowing issue could easily weigh down the entire narrative, but he undercuts the tragedy with the ludicrous reactions of the other female characters to this exotic creature:

“But you say she has only got one leg!”
“She is as full of mischief as tho’ she had ten. Look at her eyes, Lady De Courcy. Did you ever see such eyes in a decent woman’s head?”

Some of the humour elsewhere is perhaps unintentional, the following innuendo-laden scene a good case in point:

Here to her great delight she found Harry Greenacre ready mounted, with his pole in his hand …
“Shall I begin, ma’am?” said Harry, fingering his long staff in a rather awkward way.”

Maybe I’m just being smutty, but Trollope is not averse to the occasional double entendre in his other fiction.
Barchester Towers manages to be entertaining, incisive and provocative, and is representative of Trollope’s talents and range. It lacks a strong narrative arc, but with such superb characters and scenes, it is hardly necessary. In his Autobiography, Trollope wrote: “In the writing of Barchester Towers I took great delight.” His delight is evident on every page.

East of Suez by Alice Perrin

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Cover of East of Suez by Alice PerrinOriginally published in 1901, East of Suez was Alice Perrin’s first collection of short stories.  Although now largely forgotten, Perrin was one of the most successful authors of her day, commanding larger advances than the likes of Arnold Bennett (much to his chagrin, it must be said).  Perrin tells stories of illicit love and betrayal against a beautifully-drawn backdrop of the mystical east, interweaving the supernatural with exquisite details of her characters’ lives.  Unlike many of her contemporaries, Perrin handles Anglo-Indian relations with great sensitivity, showing equal humanity in her portrayal of powerful British officials and their more humble neighbours.  Through her writing, she depicts the social complexity of colonial rule, never resorting to stereotypes or simplistic representations of the people or the landscape.

Perrin’s Anglo-Indian stories are thought by some to rival the best work of Kipling, and I am inclined to agree.  Her economical yet evocative writing style, with its narrative shocks,  is well suited to the short story form.  Perrin has an unerring ability to lead the reader along a familiar path and then astonish them with an unexpected, and sometimes brutal, plot twist.  The good are not always rewarded, and the wicked often escape the sticky end they deserve.  Perrin’s endings are seldom happy, but they are always memorable.

In East of Suez Perrin uses ghosts as a form of social critique, making her writing both daring and distinctive.  The unruly spirits who inhabit her tales seek to subvert the idea of a neatly ordered colonial society, exposing both its limitations and hypocrisies.  Perrin allows the dead to speak, and occasionally to do much more.  Her use of the supernatural allowed Perrin to covertly criticise Imperial rule at a time when a more conspicuous attack would have been unthinkable.  Her politics are sexual as well as spectral.  Many of the stories are quietly feminist, showing the disastrous consequences of men failing to heed the advice of their womenfolk.  In ‘The Summoning of Arnold’, the eponymous husband realises his wife’s importance only after it is too late.  Major Kenwithin in ‘A Perverted Punishment’ spends the rest of his days in torment after judging his wife too harshly, also losing his friend in the process.  ‘A Man’s Theory’ is a terrifying depiction of a ‘rational’ husband dismissing his wife’s concern for their baby as hysteria.  My favourite story is ‘The Tiger-Charm’, a satisfying morality tale proving that the white middle-class man cannot conquer everything.

This edition includes many of the original illustrations from the serialisation of the stories in Windsor Magazine and the Illustrated London News.  There is also a detailed biography of Alice Perrin, of whom little has been written, and a thoughtful critical introduction from Melissa Edmundson Makala.  It’s hard to see why Perrin has been forgotten for so long, but I am very glad to have encountered her.

The Bazalgettes by E M Delafield

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Published anonymously in 1935, The Bazalgettes is a spoof Victorian novel by E M Delafield, best known for her highly entertaining Diary of  Provincial Lady series.  The story is set in the 1870s and centres on young Margaret Mardon, who is so desperate to escape her unhappy family home that she determines to accept the first marriage proposal offered.  A suitor appears in the form of 64-year-old widower Sir Charles Bazalgette, who essentially wants a mother for his unruly brood of five children.  Margaret accepts his proposal with alacrity, becoming “the third of her husband’s experiments in wedded bliss”.

Although Sir Charles is aloof and completely uninterested in his young wife, Margaret does her best to be a good mother and resigns herself to the disappointment of married life.  All is well until she discovers the existence of another stepson, Charlie, who is a few years older than herself and the son of Sir Charles’ mysterious first wife.  When Charlie pays a visit, Margaret encounters “six-foot-three of muscular good looks” and falls head over heels in love with him.  Her feelings are entirely reciprocated, thus placing the lovers in a difficult position.  Margaret realises that an expedient marriage has left her thoroughly miserable, and she loses interest in everything – at least until, in true Victorian sensation style,  she is rescued by a twist of fate.

Meanwhile, her sister Julia, equally desperate to escape the family home,  has fallen for the dubious charms of poet and aesthete Theodore Blanden, who is surely inspired by Bunthorne in Gilbert and Sullivan’s Patience.  He writes verse in the style of Chaucer and woos her with his latest work, ‘Blyth runs the Blud in Springe’:

Blyth runs the Blud in Springe, my Swete,
Nu hosen alle men wear
Yonge maidens pluck the nettyl-leves
And twyne about their hayre,
Then shippity, then hoppity, then sing ye springe with me!

The novel abounds with such comic creations and Delafield’s characteristic acerbic wit.  The arch, lighthearted style is reminiscent of Rhoda Broughton, as is the plot device of contrasting the fortunes of two sisters, and causing excitement by the sudden introduction of beefcake.  Although delightfully entertaining, it doesn’t succeed as a convincing Victorian novel.  Nineteenth-century attitudes are rather bolted on to the plot, and many of the characters simply enjoy far too much latitude, given their societal position.  Also, the dénouement (which I shan’t spoil) is utterly unconvincing to anyone familiar with Victorian sensibilities.  Notwithstanding my customary pickiness, it was a thoroughly enjoyable read, and one of the earliest examples of neo-Victorian fiction.

E M Delafield’s novel The War-Workers is available through our Twentieth-Century Vox imprint.

The Fixed Period by Anthony Trollope

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Cover of The Fixed Period by Anthony TrollopeThe futuristic utopia depicted in The Fixed Period (1882) is a radical and unexpected departure for Anthony Trollope.  Imagine Thomas Pynchon writing a chick lit novel, or Maeve Binchy turning her hand to slash fiction.  It’s a radical departure for me, too, as essentially I’ve been tricked into reading science fiction.  The story is set in 1980 in the fictional republic of Britannula, created when a group of ex-pats occupy the South Island of New Zealand and claim independence from Great Britain.  The 25,000-strong community is led by President John Neverbend, who almost bursts with his own self-importance and civic pride.

The tiny nation is initially peaceful and well-ordered, serving as a model democracy.  However, disharmony prevails when President Neverbend introduces his pet theory of the Fixed Period.  Concerned that people should not be allowed to outlive their usefulness, he introduces a programme of mandatory euthanasia for anyone reaching the age of 67 and a half.  His fellow legislators initially agree with the plan, although with an attendant degree of unease.  The trouble comes when the first man to be “deposited”, Gabriel Caswaller, mounts a spirited defence, and his popularity in the community means that he is also able to rouse popular support.  Neverbend is appalled that his carefully-planned scheme could fall at the first hurdle, and is completely intransigent.  His difficulties are compounded by the fact that is own son has fallen in love with Caswaller’s daughter.  Nevertheless, he perseveres with his extraordinary policy and is stopped only by a dramatic deus ex machina.

The Fixed Period is darkly comedic and one of Trollope’s most entertaining novels.  He clearly enjoyed himself enormously coming up with inventions for the 1980s and imagining what life would be like.  Although he doesn’t quite predict the ZX81 or Bananarama, he does suggest mobile telephony and a form of podcasting.  The Britain from which Britannula has seceded is essentially the same, however, with a strong hereditary principle in politics and Gladstone’s great-grandson as Prime Minister.  The character of President Neverbend is a fine creation, as is his wife, Sarah, who pricks his pomposity with Mrs Caudle-style lectures.

Contemporary reviewers weren’t quite sure what to make of The Fixed Period, and the Times described it as “essentially ghastly”.  It’s difficult to know whether Trollope seriously supported the idea of euthanasia, voluntary or otherwise.  In a curious twist of fate, however, he died not long after the novel was published, at the age of 67 and a half.

Love Well the Hour: The Life of Lady Colin Campbell by Anne Jordan

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Cover of Love Well The Hour: The Life of Lady Colin Campbell by Anne JordanLast year I reviewed Victorian Sex Goddess: Lady Colin Campbell and the Sensational Divorce Case of 1886. My only criticism was that the book focused very much on the court case, and there was little to satisfy the curious mind as to Gertrude Campbell’s subsequent career.  Fortunately, Anne Jordan has just published Love Well the Hour: The Life of Lady Colin Campbell, thereby giving this redoubtable woman more sustained consideration.

Quite apart from robustly defending herself against a syphilitic and irascible husband, Gertrude Campbell made a stand for wronged wives everywhere.  Whilst she wasn’t a feminist in the modern sense of the word, Gertrude successfully challenged the idea that a woman separated from her husband should retire from public life and lead a nun-like existence.  Rather than pursue the alimony to which she was entitled, she forged a successful career as a writer and remained truly independent for the rest of her life.  She was a prolific journalist, mainly for the Saturday Review, also writing a novel and a book on fishing.  Her pioneering enthusiasm for sports was cruelly curtailed by the onset of rheumatoid arthritis.

Gertrude’s life story is fascinating in itself (see previous post for a summary), but this biography goes much further in revealing a wealth of information on the position of women in late-Victorian society, thereby illuminating the reasons why Gertrude was so remarkable in her willingness to defy convention.

Anne Jordan’s biography is well researched, and written in a clear, engaging style.  She conveys the complexity of this tenacious and intelligent woman who is so often defined only by her part in a notorious divorce trial.

Fellow Kindlers can download the book for just under a fiver, which is an absolute bargain.

Love Well The Hour: The Life of Lady Colin Campbell by Anne Jordan

Blessed Days of Anaesthesia: How Anaesthetics Changed the World by Stephanie J. Snow

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Cover of Blessed Days of Anaesthesia by Stephanie J. SnowI hadn’t given much thought to anaesthesia until I read a biography of the writer Fanny Burney, who in 1811 underwent a mastectomy while fully conscious.  Extraordinarily she survived, living until the ripe old age of 87.  Burney’s is one of the many stories told by Stephanie Snow in Blessed Days of Anaesthesia, in which she charts the discovery and development of anaesthesia.

The story begins in 1844 with Horace Wells, an American dentist who discovered that nitrous oxide (laughing gas) could eliminate pain during dental surgery.  Unfortunately, his major public demonstration went wrong, leaving his patient squeaking and Wells’ reputation in tatters.  The ignominy was too much for him and he later committed suicide.

It was left to others to exploit and capitalise on this exciting new possibility.  Another American dentist, William Thomas Green Morton, successfully established ether as the anaesthetic of choice, and there was an unseemly struggle amongst his peers to patent the procedure and therefore maximise its earning potential.  Meanwhile, it was the physician and poet Oliver Wendell Holmes who came up with the term “anaesthesia” to describe the remarkable effect of ether on the body.

This groundbreaking discovery soon crossed the Atlantic, although the initial reaction was mixed.  It was John Snow, more famous for his work in identifying the causes of cholera, who seized upon the possibilities of ether, employing it in his surgical work and meticulously recording the results.  He soon developed an inhaler to replace the rather low-tech hanky method.  The trick was to control the inhalation of the ether so that the body would be anaesthetised without impairing any core functions.

Although some doctors were not convinced by this new discovery, others quickly grasped its potential.  An Edinburgh physician, Dr James Mathews, successfully experimented with chloroform, which rapidly overtook ether as news of its benefits spread.  Not all patients responded well to the new drug and there were tragic casualties along the way.  Mind you, it must be said that nineteenth-century surgery was a risky business in any case.   John Snow, however, suffered only one chloroform fatality out of more than 4,500 procedures.

Patrick Brontë was one of the early supporters of anaesthesia.  Having undergone painful cataract surgery in 1847, he could well imagine that the elimination of pain would be a great boon to humanity.  His daughter Charlotte’s immediate response to ether was that she would have her front teeth “extracted and rearranged” (anyone else for nineteenth-century orthodontics?)  Others were more distrustful of anaesthesia, believing pain to be an important bodily response and necessary to the preservation of life force.  Needless to say, it was mainly women who were expected to suffer.  An obvious application of the new wonder drug would be to alleviate suffering during childbirth, but not everyone believed this to be a Good Thing.  Zealous Christians and traditionalists though women should suffer to atone for Eve’s sin, and any attempt to mitigate the pain would allow them to get off far too lightly.
Religious scruples, therefore, stood in the way of many women benefiting in the early days of anaesthesia.  Some men, unwilling to watch their wives suffer, pushed themselves into the vanguard of medical science.  Charles Dickens, not generally credited with being a good husband, insisted, in the face of considerable medical opposition, that Kate should be given chloroform in 1848.  In 1850, Charles Darwin administered the drug to his wife with a hanky after she begged for relief.

Queen Victoria was the most famous recipient of chloroform.  She has a history of difficult births and was becoming increasingly distressed during the weeks leading up to Prince Leopold’s birth.  His impressive record in anaesthesia meant that John Snow was appointed the diminutive monarch’s anaesthetist.  The controversy surrounding this treatment meant that any hint of chloroform had to be suppressed, although rumours abounded.  The medical establishment, represented by The Lancet, condemned the use of anaesthesia in childbirth as irresponsible, and the Queen could not be seen publicly as having taken the ‘easy option’.  Unsurprisingly, however, Snow was thereafter in high demand, and he earned the eternal gratitude of many women.  Sadly, Snow died in 1858, aged only 45 years, but his legacy endured, and his principles of anaesthesia are still recognised today.

Of course, there was also a dark side to chloroform.  Excitable Daily Mail-style editorials reported on helpless victims rendered instantaneously insensible by baddies with chloroform-soaked hankies.  Some people eyed the opportunity of explaining their way out of tricky situations: a solicitor discovered naked in a locked bedroom claimed to have been overpowered by a pair of chloroform-wielding female burglars.  Arthur Conan Doyle fully exploited the narrative possibilities of the drug in his Sherlock Holmes stories, and Anthony Trollope used chloroform for his dystopic vision of enforced euthanasia in The Fixed Period.

One of the many joys of Snow’s book is her interweaving of medical and social history with literature.  In a relatively short account, she manages to embrace a wealth of fascinating detail without ever overloading the reader.  Furthermore, the balanced is pitched just right for the non-expert: Snow doesn’t presuppose detailed medical knowledge, but neither does she feel the need to explain the obvious.  The book is also mercifully free of the breathless narrative style favoured by many current writers of popular science.  The Blessed Days of Anaethesia is an important and absorbing contribution to our understanding of a remarkable medical advance that is so often taken for granted.  I just wish it had been available to poor Fanny Burney.

Blessed Days of Anaesthesia: How Anaesthetics Changed the World by Stephanie J. Snow

He Knew He Was Right by Anthony Trollope

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Cover of He Knew He Was Right by Anthony TrollopeI’m wondering whether it took me as long to read He Knew He Was Right (1869) as it did for Trollope to write it.  At almost 1,000 pages long, it’s the size of a business directory, and was instrumental in my decision to buy a Kindle rather than continue grappling with similarly unwieldy tomes.  Trollope had recently resigned from his Post Office posiiton when he began writing this novel, and his unsuccessful bid to enter Parliament presumably left him with an unexpectedly large amount of time on his hands.  No doubt Mrs Trollope encouraged him to take on a major project so he didn’t get under her feet or start bothering the cook.

Anyway, He Knew He Was Right is the story of Louis Trevelyan, a middle-aged man who has bagged himself a much younger and adoring wife, Emily.  Despite being thought a lucky dog by his friends, Trevelyan convinces himself that Emily has been encouraging the attentions of Colonel Osborne, a superannuated roué who is an old friend of her family.  In fact, she has been communicating with him simply to arrange for her father to be brought back from the Mandarin Islands, a territory which he governs.

Trevelyan’s jealousy grows into “morbid monomania” and his behaviour becomes increasingly erratic.  He effects a separation from Emily when she refuses to apologise for a sin she hasn’t committed.  Frustrated by Emily’s dignified reaction to his unreasonable demand for complete subjection, Trevelyan hires a dubious private detective by the name of Bozzle, abducts his own son, and finally exiles himself to rural Italy.  He unravels in front of the reader’s eyes, suffering a complete mental and physical breakdown.

The novel is a forensic examination of marriage, written at a time when the recently-established Divorce Court was exposing middle-class families to unprecedented scrutiny.  Trevelyan clings desperately to the idea of his unquestioned authority in the household and is bewildered to find himself challenged on all sides when his personal affairs are made public.  Perhaps unintentionally, Trollope makes clear the double standard which made it relatively easy for husbands to abandon inconvenient wives through unfounded accusations of adultery, whereas wronged wives found it almost impossible to extricate themselves from unfaithful husbands.

As is evident throughout his fiction, Trollope is uncomfortable with the issue of women’s rights.  Many of his novels argue forcefully that wives should remain in the private sphere and subordinate to their husbands.  He Knew He Was Right is particularly interesting in this regard, as there is a perceptible change of opinion developing through the narrative.  By the conclusion, Emily is completely absolved of blame, with her husband described as a “maniac”  and portrayed as an anachronism.  Margaret Markwick in her excellent Trollope and Women thinks he was influenced by reading Eliza Lynn Linton’s The Girl of the Period – a series of profoundly anti-women articles written for the Saturday Review. Her ridiculously exaggerated portraits of emancipated women made Trollope realise that such an extreme stance was unhelpful and nudged him into reconsidering his own opinions.  In any case, the Saturday Review was no friend of Trollope and he was possibly disinclined to align himself with their ante-diluvian editorials.  Incidentally, their reviewer dismissed He Knew He Was Right as “simply repulsive”.

Trollope’s fear of strong women is still evident, however.  Wallachia Petrie is a highly unflattering portrait of a women’s rights activist, and her outspokeness is contrasted unfavourably with Emily Trevelyan’s quiet determination.  Trollope also dodges the opportunity to champion the role of the “surplus” woman.  He tentatively suggests that improved employment opportunities might be necessary for women who are unable to marry, but then fails to develop Priscilla Stanbury, his spinster character, instead relegating her to the sidelines with an air of resignation.

Overall, He Knew He Was Right is a protracted and confused novel, perhaps reflecting Trollope’s struggles in resolving both his views and the plot.  It is one of his darkest and most psychological novels, leading Henry James to describe the conclusion as an affront to “conventional optimism”.  Mind you, Trollope did reuse a large chunk of the plot in his novella Kept in the Dark (1882), this time with a happy (if frustrating) ending.  The meandering plot has Shakespearean overtones, with tragic elements of King Lear and Othello, ocassionally leavened by a nod to The Comedy of Errors.  He Knew He Was Right is an intriguing but unendearing novel.  Had he lived a little longer, perhaps Trollope would have produced a more enlighted version: She Knew He Was Wrong.

Florence Marryat’s ‘The Blood of the Vampire’ now published

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We are very pleased to announce that our new edition of Florence Marryat’s fin-de-siècle sensation The Blood of the Vampire is now published.  This edition features a critical introduction by Greta Depledge, suggestions for further reading, explanatory notes, and additional contextual material on the novel’s themes.

To find out more, please visit the The Blood of the Vampire webpage.

Henry Dunbar by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

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Cover of Henry Dunbar by Mary Elizabeth BraddonMary Elizabeth Braddon is, of course, best known for her sensation classic Lady Audley’s Secret, with its infamous eponymous bigamist.  A contemporary critic actually thought Henry Dunbar (1864) superior, praising its “excellence of plot,” “animal vivacity,” and “boldness of incident”.  Not all reviewers were impressed, however.  Some were outraged by the central murder plot and Braddon’s handling of the theme of crime and punishment, in which she appears to argue against the death penalty.  Capital punishment was a hotly debated topic at the time, with public executions banned four years after the novel’s publication.  The compelling plot and topical themes made Henry Dunbar an ideal candidate for stage adaptation, and successful playwright Tom Taylor did the honours the following year, with Kate Terry appearing as the female lead at the Olympic Theatre.

Henry Dunbar, heir to the respectable bank of Dunbar, Dunbar and Balderby, is discovered to have defrauded the business by forcing his clerk, Joseph Wilmot, to forge cheques.  When confronted with his crime, he lays the blame squarely on Wilmot, refusing to take any responsibility for his actions.  His uncle banishes Dunbar to the firm’s Indian office as punishment, while his accomplice is summarily dismissed.  Having no other means of supporting himself, Wilmot re-offends and is eventually transported to Tasmania.  The novel’s main action commences when the two men meet again after 30 years, the crime and its consequences still raw in both their minds.  Wilmot’s daughter Margaret, a strong-willed young woman, turns detective in order to find out the truth surrounding the fateful reunion.

Margaret Wilmot is an early example of the lady detective, and through her, Braddon examines the fluidity of female identity and also the effects of a father’s crime on his daughter.  Although Braddon in this case is concerned mainly with the social implications of having a felonious parent, she also tentatively explores the idea of heredity, which came to dominate some of her later work.  Taylor’s stage adaptation was sub-titled ‘A Daughter’s Trials’, thus emphasising the importance of Margaret’s teleological experience.  Margaret, despite her determination, essentially conforms to feminine ideals, and appears tame in comparison with more transgressive female detectives, such as Leona Lacoste in Florence Marryat’s Her Father’s Name.  However, Margaret is more human, making it easier for the reader to engage with her quest, and her strength of mind sets her apart from other literary heroines.

In the scholarly introduction, Braddon scholar Anne-Marie Beller places Margaret within the context of other female detectives and considers recent criticism of the genre.  Anne-Marie examines the novel’s other main themes, and also compares it with the serialised version, which was made even more sensational to appeal to working-class readers.  The appendices include contemporary reviews, a parody of sensation fiction, and an extract from the script of the stage adaptation.

Henry Dunbar was one of the most financially successful of Braddon’s novels, with The Era commenting that its success “is a brilliant as the wing of a summer butterfly.  Let us hope it will be more enduring.”  As Anne-Marie writes in her introduction: “it deserves to be read today, not only as an interesting story in its own right, but also as a fascinating commentary on mid-Victorian ideas about class, gender, and crime.”  I would certainly agree, and think it is one of Braddon’s most accomplished and tightly-plotted novels.  Like The Era, I hope it endures a little longer.