Promotional Information

* National press broadsheet ad campaign including The Irish Times Saturday Magazine * Author PR activity to include media interviews, starting with an interview in The Sunday Times Magazine, plus events and appearances at literary festivals * Poster and displaybin with custom header * Submitted for trade promotions * Reading copies available * Signed copies available

About the Author

Beryl Bainbridge is one of the greatest living novelists. Author of seventeen novels, two travel books and five plays for stage and television, she has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize five times, and has won many literary awards including the Whitbread Prize and the Author of the Year Award at the British Book Awards.

Reviews

'A stellar literary event. written with panache & an enviable economy.the biggest risk of her literary life' Margaret Atwood *'This is a small, wise book of small prose miracles. It is a larger miracle in this way: it makes us feel we see Johnson & his friends in unexpected & unfamiliar ways which are nevertheless convincing and authentic. I did not think anyone could do this, & still have no idea how Bainbridge pulled it off' Andrew Marr, Daily Telegraph

'A stellar literary event. written with panache & an enviable economy.the biggest risk of her literary life' Margaret Atwood *'This is a small, wise book of small prose miracles. It is a larger miracle in this way: it makes us feel we see Johnson & his friends in unexpected & unfamiliar ways which are nevertheless convincing and authentic. I did not think anyone could do this, & still have no idea how Bainbridge pulled it off' Andrew Marr, Daily Telegraph

In recent years, Bainbridge's novels have shifted from pure fiction to the ironic treatment of historical figures or events: The Birthday Boys (1991) considered Scott's Antarctic expedition; Every Man for Himself (1996), the sinking of the Titanic; and Master Georgie (1998), the Crimean War. Beginning and ending in 1784 with the death (and autopsy report) of Dr. Samuel Johnson, her latest work ranges over his last 20 years, when Hester Thrale, the wife of a wealthy brewer, was pivotal in his life a relationship that continues to interest Johnson scholars. The viewpoint is not exclusively "according to Queeney," Mrs. Thrale's precocious oldest daughter, but her caustic assessment matters. Latin tutor and family friend Johnson was gentle and kind to Queeney, but here the eminent man of letters is portrayed as slovenly, eccentric, unstable, and ill. Bainbridge's novel is interesting as an experiment in writing about a figure from the past, but the fiction is often submerged beneath the history. For comprehensive collections of British literature. Ruth H. Miller, Univ. of Southern Indiana Lib., Evansville Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.