Amazon blurb:
A visitor calls with a gift and a message from the past in this literary, historical novel. In 1802 Thomas de Quincey, a young man from a comfortable middle-class background who would go on to become one of the most celebrated writers of his day, collapsed on Oxford Street and was discovered by a teenage prostitute who brought him back to her room and nursed him to health. It was the beginning of a relationship that would introduce Thomas to a world just below the surface of London’s polite society, where pleasure was a tradeable commodity and opium could seem the only relief from poverty. Yet it is also a world where love might blossom, and goodness survive. The lives of a street girl, an aspiring writer, and a freed slave cross and re-cross the slums of London in this novel about the birth of passion, the burden of addiction, and the consolations of literature.
My reading experience:
Thanks to Holland House and NetGalley for my free ARC.
Meet Anna, from a dark and dirty world of poverty and depravity, who resurfaces as a child prostitute in 1802 London just in time to meet Thomas De Quincey.
Although this is a fictional work, most people are familiar with Thomas De Quincey’sThe Confessions of an Opium Eater first published in 1821. This type of historical fiction brings history to life by weaving a tale of pure speculation in such glorious colour soas to reveal and illuminate the social society of the nineteenth century.
This author has gasped air into De Quincey’s story and provided the reader with a window into the addiction, passion and pleasure of the Romantic era.
Appletree Books 