Tracy Chevalier's new novel is set in London at the end of the eighteenth century and its a wonderful read on every level. It is three years after the French Revolution; paranoia and unrest are in the air and we are invited to stay in a gerry-built terrace house on the seamy South Bank near Westminster Bridge, part of the estate owned by a flamboyant circus impresario. One of the neighbours is William Blake, poet, artist, revolutionary and most famously author of the seditious poem Tyger, Tyger, Burning Bright. We follow the fortunes of teenager Jem and his family, newly up from Dorset, and the low life they encounter.
| Primary Genre | Historical Fiction |
| Other Genres: | |
| Recommendations: |
Flames and funerals, circus feats and seduction, neighbours and nakedness: Tracy Chevalier's new novel Burning Bright sparkles with drama.
London 1792. The Kellaways move from familiar rural Dorset to the tumult of a cramped, unforgiving city. They are leaving behind a terrible loss, a blow that only a completely new life may soften.
Against the backdrop of a city jittery over the increasingly bloody French Revolution, a surprising bond forms between Jem, the youngest Kellaway boy, and streetwise Londoner Maggie Butterfield. Their friendship takes a dramatic turn when they become entangled in the life of their neighbour, the printer, poet and radical, William Blake. He is a guiding spirit as Jem and Maggie navigate the unpredictable, exhilarating passage from innocence to experience. Their journey inspires one of Blake's most entrancing works.
Georgian London is recreated as vividly in Burning Bright as 17th-century Delft was in Tracy Chevalier's bestselling masterpiece, Girl with a Pearl Earring.
Burning Bright features in the following genres: Historical Fiction, Modern and Contemporary Fiction, eBooks of the Month, Fiction, General Fiction, Recommendations
Burning Bright is available in Paperback, Ebook, Hardback
Burning Bright was written by Tracy Chevalier and published by Harper an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers
Burning Bright has 390 pages
£9.89
