The Great Unknown by Peg Kingman

It was a time of social turmoil.

The working man wanted his voice heard in government. The Chartist movement was met with a violent reaction from the powers that be; the leaders were imprisoned or they fled the country.

It was an age of science.

Gentlefolk became amateur naturalists, collecting specimens of life living and dead. Fossil discoveries caused great wonder. Theories were created to explain the fossil records, some contorted to fit the Christian idea of time and history. Scandalous books were published suggesting a natural history that upset the Christian hegemony.

In natural law, Constantia knew, there is no justice. Suffering does not matter at all...We have a better idea than that despicable one. We can imagine something far better. We have imagined it; do imagine it; and we call it God.~from The Great Unknown by Peg Kingman

My Victorian Age professor had our class read pivotal books published in 1859, including The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. The professor told us that the ideas behind Darwin's book had been around; Darwin's genius was to put the puzzle pieces together, grounded in sound scientific research. Darwin dragged his feet publishing his theory, knowing the havoc it would bring.

The Great Unknown by Peg Kingman is set in 1846 when people were beginning to think about the questions Darwin finally, publicly, addressed in 1859.

There is a mysterious woman at the heart of the novel who goes by the alias Mrs. McAdams. She left her husband and traveled to the city to give birth to twins, one of whom died a month later. She is enlisted to be a wet nurse to a brilliant family who warmly welcomes her.

Mrs. McAdams struggles with issues of identity. Her mother's early death left clouded her true paternity. And she wonders about the big questions: are we ruled by chance, nature, or God? What does it mean to be human? What separates us from other creatures?

Several books are central in the novel, books that arouse deep thoughts from the characters. One is the 1845 best-selling, iconoclastic Vestiges of the National History of Creation. Another is the 1831 On Naval Timber and Arboriculture, which sounds like a yawner, but its appendix included a discussion of natural selection.

Vestiges became a best-seller. It appears and reappears in the novel, traveling from hand to hand.

They were dangerous things, book; best locked safely away in cages, like fierce beasts in a menagerie. ~from The Great Unknown by Peg Kingman

Mrs. McAdams's backstory is slowly revealed. Her quest to find her natural father takes her on an interesting and surprising journey. She questions many things--why a baby with extra digits is not embraced as an evolutionary improvement; whether things happen by chance or design; if humankind has the power--clearly, it does have the will--to reverse the spinning of the galaxies. 

The Great Unknown is an idea-driven story, and I found myself intrigued to read on for the questions posed are timeless.

As a quilter interested in quilt and fiber history, I was interested in Mrs. McAdam's vocation creating 'bizarres', designs for roller-printed cottons that were popular in the 1840s. Her designs were inspired by the minuscule life she discovered under the powerful new microscopes. Science had even invaded fashion! Colors, too. The newly discovered aniline dyes replaced the plant-based dyes, and new colors rose to popularity: mauve and purple, chrome yellow and orange, and greens that did not fade to blue or tan or rely on arsenic.

1830s-40s prints. 

Our heroine's journey takes her into her past to discover her true family roots before she returns to her husband. All their hopes are realized in a strange and circular way in a satisfying resolution.

In the 19th c, science was embraced as a panacea to society's ills, a way to reverse the natural order. Science disturbed the status quo and challenged Biblical authority, upended humanity's place in the universe and scheme of things.

But as Mrs. McAdams and we know, it appears that chance is what really rules the universe.

I was granted access to a free ebook by the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

The Great Unknown
by Peg Kingman
W. W. Norton & Company
Pub Date 18 Feb 2020
ISBN 9781324003366
PRICE $26.95 (USD)

Things in Jars by Jess Kidd

If Charles Dickens and Neil Gaiman and Conan Doyle had devised a Victorian Era Gothic mystery with a female detective partial to 'medicinal' tobacco who is hired to find a kidnapped girl who is perhaps not quite human, aided by a dead man and former circus freak, it would not be outdone by Jess Kidd's Things in Jars.

The coal smoke and fog of London, complete with its olfactory smorgasbord of industry and market, the filthy Thames and its dung-filled streets, the miasma blamed for cholera and other deadly diseases is vividly described. 

The novel is Victorian in writing style, with Dickensian descriptions and sensational penny dreadful worthy murderous villains. It is populated with Resurrectionists, mudlarks, people with false identities, and avid collectors of curiosities--things in jars.

Sir Edmund has an extensive collection of aquatic life--aberrations--things in jars, including the Winter Mermaid, the Irish merrow specimen that went missing long ago. The fishy merrow could take on female human form, beautiful but dangerous killers. Sir Edmund's reclusive, 'singular daughter' has disappeared, along with her nurse and the doctor. Sir Edmund won't share details, but he is desperate to find Christabel.

Here is time held in suspension. Yesterday picked. Eternity in a jar. ~from Things in Jars by Jess Kidd

Sir Edmund has called detective Bridie Devine to find the missing girl.

Bridie's early childhood was spent with a resurrectionist--once a man of science before ruined by drink and gambling--who taught her how to determine how long a body had been dead. Then a gentleman doctor took her from the streets to groom as his assistant. Now, she helps the police, "working out how people died." She failed to find her last kidnapped child case, and perhaps that failure was why she was chosen for this case.

Bridie is a wonderful character. Like Sherlock Holmes, she dons disguises, she is identified by her choice of hat, and smokes a pipe. She is also quite modern, railing against societal restraints on women, the 'market price' of their value. Middle age is creeping up--is it too late for a lover? Ruby Doyle's ghost has been following her, claiming they had a history; there is an affection between them. Who was he?

Kidd captures a time when Darwin's theory is breaking news and science and pseudoscience is all the rage. I love the novels and era that inspired this novel, and I love this novel, too.

I was given access to a free ebook by the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Things in Jars
by Jess Kidd
Atria Books
Pub Date 04 Feb 2020
ISBN 9781982121280
PRICE $27.00 /$36.00 (CAD) hardcover

The Secret Garden Cookbook by Amy Colter

I read Francis Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden after my mother told me she had read it as a girl, and that her mother had read it as a girl. It was the only book my mother ever mentioned having read as a child.

The beloved children's classic story tells the story of Mary Lennox who had lived a life of ease in India; after cholera takes her family, she is sent to live in England. Adjusting to her new life, the lonely girl meets local boy Dickson and together they discover and revive a neglected garden. Although rife with dated colonialist and racist attitudes, the basic story of regeneration is timeless.

Food plays an important role in the book, and cookbook author Amy Colter shares recipes inspired by the story, newly revised and updated to appear with the release of the new The Secret Garden movie. Quotations from the novel regarding food are interspersed.

Colter's chapter introductions informs readers on many subjects from the typical Victorian meals to what was in a kitchen garden to the history of tea.

So many of these recipes are homely and wholesome and nostalgic. 

Chapters include: 

• Yorkshire Breakfasts; Coddled Eggs are so simple--why don't we made them every week? I do make my own cocoa mix--this recipe has a dash of cinnamon!
• A Manor Lunch; this casual meal could include Potato Snow, Roasted Chicken with Bread Sauce, or Welsh Rabbit.
• An English Tea; I am now dreaming of Warm Cranberry Scones with Orange Glaze and Fruit Tea Loaf!
• From the Kitchen Garden; Wholesome fresh food including Sweet Glazed Carrots and easy Summer Berry Pudding.
• Dickon's Cottage Food; Tattie Broth, Pease Pudding, Yorkshire Oatcakes--this is my idea of comfort food!
• A Taste of India; Exotic recipes from Colonial India includes Fruit Lassi, Mulligatawny Soup (which I make frequently!), and Fresh Magno Chutney.
• Garden Picnics; Including the easy to transport Cornish Pasties, brought to my home state of Michigan by immigrants working in the copper mines--a complete meal.

This is a delightful book.

I was given access to a free egalley by the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

from the publisher:
Experience the magic and enchantment of The Secret Garden whenever you like, right at home in your kitchen. The Secret Garden Cookbook, now newly revised, is the only cookbook that celebrates the delicious and comforting foods that play such an important role in the novel and its world.

Frances Hodgson Burnett's wonderful tale The Secret Garden celebrates its young heroine, Mary Lennox, as she brings an abandoned garden back to life. It also delights in good food, robust appetites, and the health and strength they can bring. It describes a world where water, light, and loving care bring soil and plants back to life—and also one in which fresh milk, homemade currant buns, and hearty, simple fare renew and bring pleasure to the novel's complex and fascinating characters.

Amy Cotler serves up in these pages 50 recipes, all updated for the modern kitchen, that are at once true to Mary's world and completely appealing for today's tastes. You will find a bounty of baked things, including English Crumpets, Cozy Currant Buns, Jam Roly Poly, Dough Cakes with Cinnamon and Sugar, and The Best Sticky Gingerbread Parkin. (A parkin is a cake rich in molasses, honey, and sugar that often is served on Guy Fawkes Day.) There is more-substantial and savory fare for teatime and dinnertime, too, and for breakfast and brunch, along with drinks and snacks for the daily whirl—all guaranteed to keep the magic of this beloved tale alive for years to come.

The Secret Garden Cookbook is an essential companion—and the pitch-perfect gift—for anyone, young or old, who loves the book.

The Secret Garden Cookbook, Newly Revised Edition
Inspiring Recipes from the Magical World of Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden
by Amy Cotler
Publisher: Harvard Common Press
Publication: Jan 14, 2020
Hardback, 112 Pages, $19.99 / £12.99
ISBN: 9781558329935

The Doll Factory by Elizabeth Mcneal

The Crystal Palace was built to house the first International trade fair. Championed by Prince Albert, the exhibition hall was a showcase of the Industrial Age's newest inventions. The art displays impacted Victorian taste and inspired an interest in Japanese and Moorish art. Objects included the rare, like the Kooh-N-Nor diamond, and the commonplace, like three Kentucky-made bed quilts. Then there were the curiosities of which the Victorians were so enamored. Fourteen taxidermists had displays like stuffed kittens sitting at a table having tea.

The Crystal Palace is at the center of Elizabeth Macneal's novel The Doll Factory.

It is Dickensian in its sweep of characters.

There are the enterprising street urchins Albie and his sister, children who take up any work to provide for themselves--including prostitution and providing dead animals to the taxidermist Silas Reed.

Silas, damaged, unloved and unloveable, is one of the most interesting and chilling villains, more complicated than Bill Sykes and less self-aware than Uriah Heap. Silas is most drawn to curiosities, things both grotesque and lovely.

Silas is fixated on the girl Iris, whose collar bone was broken at birth, leaving her with a marred beauty.

Iris works painting porcelain doll faces with her sister Rose. Iris longs to escape the drudgery of her work, secretly painting with dreams of being an artist. Rose's gorgeous beauty was ruined by smallpox, leaving her bitter. Albie earns a bit by sewing simple skirts for the dolls.

And into this mix we have Louis Frost, a bohemian artist in the new renegade school of art called the Pre-Raphelite Brotherhood.

Louis needs a model for his painting. Iris longs to escape the drudgery of doll faces, secretly painting with dreams of being an artist. A pact is made: Iris will model for Louis and he will teach her to paint.

Iris blossoms under Louis's tutelage. But a jealous Silas fantasizes she really loves him. We are taken into a horrifying descent into Silas's sick world, with a Gothic plot twist, and a climactic ending.

I loved this journey! As a devotee of Victorian Age literature and art, and for the page-turning thriller ending, it was perfect.

I was given access to a free ebook by the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

The Doll Factory
by Elizabeth Mcneal
Atria Books
Publication August 13, 2019
$27 hardcover
ISBN13: 9781982106768

ISBN

Dickens and Christmas

Charles Dickens is the great great great grandfather of author Lucinda Hawksley. I discovered Hawksley on social media and learned about her newest book Dickens and Christmas. I knew I had to read it!

A Christmas Carol has been a favorite story since Third Grade when I was Martha in a elementary school play. I memorized all the lines by heart watching rehearsals.

Our school play of A Christmas Carol, 1962

Growing up I watched every movie version every year. Later my husband and I read the story out loud and together watched our favorite movie versions. (I even wrote a paper about A Christmas Carol for my Studies in the Victorican Age course at university!)

Dickens and Christmas is a biographical history of Christmas in Dickens's personal and professional life, and a social history of the celebration's evolution in England in the Victorian Age. The celebration underwent a huge transformation to become the holiday we know today. We learn about the Twelfth Night celebration of Dickens's youth and the joyful celebrations he shared with his family.

Hawksley draws from writings by family members, letters, and the Christmas texts to create a vivid portrait of Dickens as family , writer, and social reformer.

Few readers today know about Dickens's other best-selling Christmas stories. They were so popular that he was required to write a new one every year, which became a source of great stress, requiring six months work while also writing his novels. The early novellas became short stories published in his magazines, Household Words and All the Year Round.

One of the aspects of the Christmas stories I love best of all is Dickens's desire to improve social conditions for the poor and most vulnerable in society. Dickens was a 'resistance' writer of his time, intending to bring awareness and sow seeds for legal and social change. I

Because of Dickens's Christmas writings, the season has become one of charity and good will.

God bless us, every one!

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Dickens and Christmas
by Lucinda Hawksley
Pen & Sword
Publication Date: October 30, 2017
ISBN:  9781526712264
PRICE: £19.99 (GBP)

Charles Dickens quilt by Nancy A. Bekofske

Charles Dickens quilt by Nancy A. Bekofske
In the style of  19th c British quilts, with embroidered images from his novels

Read about my Charles Dickens quilt at
https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2015/12/four-years-with-charles-dickens.html

Read more about Charles Dickens and A Christmas Carol at
https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2015/12/christmas-community-and-changed-lives.html

Read about Karen Kenyon's book Charles Dickens:Compassion and Contradiction at
https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2017/06/resistence-writer-charles-dickens.html

The Wonder by Emma Donoghue

The Wonder by Emma Donoghue immersed me into another world, an almost claustophobic closed society, reduced to one room, one patient, and little outside interaction.

An English nurse trained under Florence Nightengale during the Crimean War, Lib is hired for an unusual two week position in a poor Irish village. The village still bears the scars of the potato famine, windowless and deserted cottages ovegrown with vegetation, hungry women and children huddled in the rain.

Lib's scientific training is to be utilized in objective observation of eleven-year-old Anna who stopped eating on her last birthday four months previous. A committee has hired Lib and a nun to watch Anna every minute, in shifts, to verify that the child truly has not been eating.

The villagers are ardent Roman Catholics who along with their prayers and rosary continue to adher to local folklore, setting out saucers of milk for the wee folk. Anna's physician hopes he is watching a new level of human evolution that portends the end of starvation and war. Others believe they are watching a miracle. Very few recognize the signs of starvation.

Lib doubts what she is seeing, knows the girl must be participating in a hoax. An unbeliever, Lib distains the pious Catholicism of Anna and her community. As Lib watches Anna decline in bodily health she comes to see the girl's deep intelligence and learns that the child is willing to die if it means she can save her deceased brother from purgatory.

Good nurses follow rules, but the best know when to break them Lib decides, and with the help of
Byrne, a newsman lured by a story, she decides to break all the rules she has been taught, becoming personally involved with Anna and altering her fate. To do nothing is the deadliest sin, Byrne had told her.

This is the first time I have read Donoghue. It is a masterfully crafted novel. The novel has subtle details that place it in time. The Crimea War and Great Potato Famine are recently past. Lib reads Charles Dicken's magazine All the Year Round and George Eliot's Adam Bede. Byrne's history as a journalist reminds that while Ireland starved Parliment stood silent. Lib is allowed to slowly grow in her understanding of what she is observing, struggling with issues of faith and the nature of her professional role. Perhaps the ending is too neat, but it is gratifying wishfullfillment. We come to admire Lib and Anna captures our hearts.

The story was inspired by the stories of Fasting Girls over the centuries.

I received a free ebook from the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.



The Wonder
Emma Donoghue
Little, Brown, and Company
Publication Date: Sept 20, 2016
$27 hard cover
ISBN:9780316393874

A Victorian Police Officer in Petticoats: The Female Detective by Andrew Forrester

The Female Detective was published in 1864 when law enforcement organizations were cutting edge. Mike Ashley's introduction to The Female Detective notes the first British police agency was organized in 1829 and Scotland Yard was created in 1842. Edgar Allen Poe introduced the first detective in fiction in 1841. Alan Pinkerton employed the first woman detective in 1856. The character of 'Miss B', undercover police agent, was novel and original.

The Female Detective stories were written by Andrew Forrester, the pen name of writer and editor James Redding Ware. His unnamed heroine addresses the reader to explain the importance of her secretive work and justify the role of the female spy in society.

Who am I?It can matter little who I am.
I would have my readers at once accept my declaration that whatever may be the results of the practice of my profession in others, in me that profession has not led me towards hardheartedness. 
For what reason do I write this book?
...I may as well say at once I write in order to show, in a small way, that the profession to which I belong is so useful that it should not be despised.

Seven stories follow, some showing how our female detective operates, some are stories she has heard, and the last story is a comedic delight that is quite Dickensian in humor. Her purpose is to broadly illustrate the importance of the detective.

Miss B predates Sherlock Holmes but uses the same logical thinking to puzzle out her cases. She posses as a milliner or takes up local residence to gain access to her subject. She cross-examines in the guise of a friendly ear. Then she makes her deduction and sets out for proof.

Her powers of observation are astute. Boot marks "have sent more men to the gallows, as parts of circumstantial evidence than any other proof whatever," Miss B proclaims. She advises evildoers to carry a second pair of boots to wear while committing their crime! She explains what she calls the "audacity of hiding," that the safest hiding place is the most obvious, citing "the great enigma-novelist, Edgar Poe" who illustrated this when a man places a letter in a card-rack on the mantelpiece when he knows his house will be searched.

...the value of the detective lies not so much in discovering facts, as in putting them together and finding out what they mean.

Because our female detective is not heartless, but is committed to the law, she can find herself faced with perplexing moral choices. She places her duty above pity.

A man is your friend, but if he transgresses that law which it is your duty to see observed, you have no right to spare him...

She accuses the English police system as requiring "more intellect infused into it. Many of the men are extraordinarily acute and are able to seize facts as they rise to the surface. But they are unable to work out what is below the surface."

I enjoyed the sense of humor in the writing, often at the expense of her male coequals. "I found out the constable, and I am constrained to say--a greater fool I never indeed did meet. He was too stupid to be anything else than utterly, though idiotically, honest."

The stories are varied in subject and style; some are recognizable as traditional detective fiction, some more anecdotal and not directly related to Miss B. I enjoyed reading them all.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

The Female Detective
Andrew Forrester
Poisoned Pen Press
Publication Date August, 2016
ISBN: 9781464206481 ebook

The Compulsive Storyteller: Wilkie Collins

The high Victorian age saw the rise of the novel as we know it. Taxes on paper had been abolished and advances in printing technology led to an increase in book production. Circulating libraries and monthly magazines offered affordable access to literature to the masses. "Shilling Shockers" were hawked for reading on the trains. Millions of working men and women were buying up cheap penny journals.

The new class of readers wanted a new kind of novel. Sensationalism, sentimentality, and melodrama were in demand, and stories about crime and murder. They wanted Genre fiction that took readers on a wild ride, with great plots to keep things moving along.

And Wilkie Collins was a genius at just this kind of novel.

Peter Ackroyd's short biography Wilkie Collins, A Brief Life succinctly covers the life and art of the author of The Women in White and The Moonstone. 

With a "painter's eye" and brilliant plotting he became the fourth greatest writer of his generation. He wrote the first English detective story and created the first female detective. A social liberal who disdained Victorian values, he tackled controversial issues, writing about the underclass, vivisection, illegitimacy, and 'fallen women'. His female characters were strong and self sufficient, the opposite of the idealized Victorian female.

He suffered from bad health and was in pain most of his life. He used laudanum in ever increasing doses, grateful for the relief it brought. Later he added calomel and colchicum and inhaled amyl nitrite. Wilkie Collins used a cane in his thirties and by his sixties his health was so deteriorated people thought he looked twenty years older. And yet when working on a book he kept up a diligent pace, even dictating from his sick bed.

Collins determined not to marry, but had a long term mistress Caroline Graves (who already had a child) and later a second mistress who bore him children. The two women never met although their children sometimes mingled at his home.

Caroline Graves, from The Secret Life of Wilkie Collins by William Clarke

At university I had a Victorian Studies course in which we read the important books published in 1859. That was the year in which Charles Dickens, in his magazine All the Year Round, published his serialized A Tale of Two Cities. The November issue saw the conclusion of Two Cities and the first installment of The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins. (This was also the year Origin of Species was published!)

I later read The Moonstone. I also read a lot about Charles Dickens and learned about his collaboration with Wilkie Collins to write The Frozen Deep, inspired by the lost Franklin expedition which never returned from the frozen north. Franklin's widow didn't give up hope and sent an expedition to find her husband. Collins and Dickens were great friends and collaborated in other plays as well, even acting.

But I knew nothing of the man Collins. And what an odd man he was! He was completely unconventional. He wore flashy clothes, was oddly proportioned, and loved French cooking. Medical science could only offer him remedies that today we shudder to consider, and likely ruined his health even more.

I am left wanting to explore his life in greater depth, to know him more vividly. I also an curious to re-read again Women in White, which spawned quite a fan club, and books I have not read especially Heart and Science which Ackroyd contends is one of Collin's "most unjustly neglected novels" with more characterization.

I thank the publisher and NetGalley for the free ebook in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Wilkie Collins, A Brief Life
by Peter Ackroyd
Doubleday Books
$12.99 ebook
Publication date: October 6, 2015
ISBN: 9780385537407