From Our Own Backlist: Slammerkin by Emma Donoghue

From Our Own Backlist: Slammerkin by Emma Donoghue

Posted by in Editorial

With all the (deserved) fuss over Emma Donoghue's new novel, Room, I thought readers would be interested to be reminded of an early book of hers that we published.  Slammerkin, a delicious 18th century word, meaning a loose dress, a loose woman,  is the title we took for this extraordinary historical novel. It is set in London and Monmouth and is partly based on a real and terrible murder that took place in 1763 when a young girl named Mary Saunders took a cleaver and killed her employer, Mrs Jones.   Emma Donoghue found a broadsheet of time which reported The Confession and last Dying-Words of Mary Saunders who said that she did it because she longed `for fine clothes'.

This fragment set off Emma Donoghue. She situates her Mary in the streets of London , dreaming not just of food and warmth but of ribbons and fine clothes.  It is this hunger for glamour that makes her rebel against her lot in life, and lures her into prostitution at the age of thirteen.   But she flees London and ends up in Monmouth, her mother's home town, where she tries to start a new life as a maid.  New loyalties and old lies catch her in a tangle that she cannot shake off however and…. well, we know the end.

I love this book and  I love the genius of this writer who saw that it could all begin with a longing for a red, satin ribbon.

Social Sharing and Bookmarking Options:

Related Articles

Here's a selection of keyword-matched articles that you might also find interesting:

  1. From Our Own Backlist:I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Tags for this Article:

,