Book description
142 Strand was the home of the brilliant, unconventional young
publisher John Chapman. All the daring and avant-garde writers and
thinkers of Victorian London gathered here, among them Carlyle,
Dickens, Thackeray; Americans like Emerson and refugees from
revolutionary Europe like Mazzini. In 1851 Chapman brought Marian
Evans - the future George Eliot - to London where her arrival caused
rows in the household, which included Chapman's wife and also his mistress.
The Strand was packed with booksellers, magazine publishers,
theatres, clubs, and quack doctors. Only a short distance away were
Westminster, the Houses of Parliament and the disreputable
pornographers of Holywell street. Chapman's circle touched all these
worlds, and the vivid story of these unconventional lives and
unorthodox views - marvellously told by Rosemary Ashton - takes us to
the heart of Victorian culture, uncovering its surprising energy, its
doubts and arguments, and, above all, its passionate reforming spirit.
Rosemary Ashton is Quain Professor of English Language and Literature
at University College London. She is the author of acclaimed critical
biographies of Coleridge, George Henry Lewes and George Eliot and
Thomas and Jane Carlyle: Portrait of a Marriage
.
