Carolyn Kirby, award-winning author of When We Fall and The Conviction Of Cora Burns. talks to AD Bergin about her new novel, Ravenglass. A sweeping adventure with a cross-dressing main character, Kit, it’s set against a backdrop of 18th-century social and industrial revolution, the lesser-known regional slave trade, and the Jacobite rising of 1745. AB: […]
Female sexuality in historical fiction
Lesley McDowell wanted to show all the consequences of women’s sexuality in her novel, Clairmont — the tragic and the happy. There was plenty of both in the Shelley-Godwin-Byron circle that shaped her protagonist Claire Clairmont’s life. And female sexual desire needs to be reflected in historical fiction, Lesley says. In a letter to her […]
Eight Women Writers, One Fabulous Read.
Hunter S. Jones introduces us to the team behind her latest book, Sexuality and Its Impact on History – the surprising story of the British between the sheets! Everything begins with a thought. From there, thought becomes energy and concepts are created. Two years ago, I noticed that there was a murmur across social media platforms. People […]
A Guide to Victorian Sex
What does Ballykissangel have in common with the dirtiest book of the Victorian era? This coincidence I stumbled upon while researching the counterculture of London’s swinging ’60s – that is, the 1860s. What happens offstage, behind the action, in the Victorian novels we know so well? I sought specifics: where did Dorian Gray go that […]