Lover of books, avid reader, Dickens enthusiast, wine drinker, knitter, writer, lover of all things Victorian, Northern lass moving back to the North, divorced.
The Story of Divorce
My current work in progress: Exploring the stories of the bigamists and bastards, feminists and fornicators that gave us the law of divorce as it exists today.
Latest from the Blog
Catherine Cookson’s The Mallen Streak
Having recently read the biography of the life of Catherine Cookson, and having moved close to Hexham, I decided it was about time to delve into some classic Cookson novels. I started with The Mallen Streak. I have a vague recollection of reading this when I was about ten or eleven years old but notContinue reading “Catherine Cookson’s The Mallen Streak”
‘Bleak House, the fact that Esther gets smallpox…’: Dickens in Ducks, Newburyport
This is the paper I gave at The Impact of Dickens conference on 17 September, with many thanks to Dr Pete Orford, Dr John Drew, my fellow panelists and the attendees for a brilliant discussion of all things Dickens over the two days. In 2019, the novel Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann was published toContinue reading “‘Bleak House, the fact that Esther gets smallpox…’: Dickens in Ducks, Newburyport”
Lovechild: A Sloppy Affair?
Reading over Our Mutual Friend again, one word (or two words joined by a hyphen) shook me out of my comfortable familiarity with the text: ‘love-child’. I suppose in some ways, I shouldn’t have been surprised. There is a long tradition of exploring illegitimacy in fiction. Indeed, the nineteenth century is awash with characters bornContinue reading “Lovechild: A Sloppy Affair?”
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