Booklog 35/2019 - Sarah M Eden: The Lady and the Highwayman

[jacey]

The title is a bit misleading. This isn't about a lady or a highwayman, but about a pair of Victorian writers. Fletcher Walker is reasonably affluent, but he's dragged himself up from the gutter by his bootstraps. His mission now (along with friends in the Dread Penny Society) is to support a 'ragged' school for the poorest children, and also to rescue some of the badly treated ones and send them to that school. He finances this from the proceeds of writing 'penny dreadfuls' but just lately a new author, a Mr King, has become popular enough to threaten Fletcher's sales. What he doesn't know is that respectable Elizabeth Black, headmistress of Thurloe School and renowned author of silver fork novels, also writes pulp fiction under the name of Mr. King. Interspersed with the main story are the penny dreadfuls the two authors are writing. The Lady and the Highwayman is one of those novels.

Apart from a few research blips concerning pre-decimal English coinage, the naming of English streets, and the location of Windsor Castle, this is a very readable story. It's a gentle romance. The characters are engaging and the story fairly rattles along. It's not due out until September 2019, so there may be time to make corrections before the final printing.