The Maid of Buttermere

Paperback / ISBN-13: 9780340423738

Price: £10.99

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Melvyn Bragg’s highly acclaimed, bestselling historical novel, the story behind one of the 19th century’s greatest scandals.

‘This is the story of an impostor and bigamist, a self-styled Colonel Hope, who travels to the North, where eventually he marries “The Maid of Buttermere”, a young woman whose natural beauty inspired the dreams and confirmed the theories of various early nineteenth-century writers . . . It is a fine story . . . This is historical fiction with a human face’
Peter Ackroyd, The Times

‘A skilled, ornate and convincing examination of a nineteenth-century scandal in Bragg’s own Cumbria’
Thomas Keneally

‘A triumph . . . I am overwhelmingly impressed’
Beryl Bainbridge

‘Bragg achieves the most difficult of feats, the telling of the changing perceptions and ideals of a radical age . . . He is also as powerful as ever in his description of nature’
Sunday Times

Reviews

A vivid and erudite tour de force
Penelope Lively
This is the story of an impostor and bigamist, a self-styled Colonel Hope, who travels to the North, where eventually he marries "The Maid of Buttermere", a young woman whose natural beauty inspired the dreams and confirmed the theories of various early nineteenth-century writers . . . It is a fine story . . . This is historical fiction with a human face
Peter Ackroyd, The Times
A skilled, ornate and convincing examination of a nineteenth-century scandal in Bragg's own Cumbria
Thomas Keneally
A detailed, eloquent and affecting panorama of truth and lies . . . thrusts [him] into the front rank
Mail on Sunday
A triumph . . . I am overwhelmingly impressed
Beryl Bainbridge
Bragg achieves the most difficult of feats, the telling of the changing perceptions and ideals of a radical age . . . He is also as powerful as ever in his description of nature
Sunday Times
A terrific tale of passion, lust, deception and moral outrage.
Daily Mail
Bragg writes with picturesque clarity; his prose accommodates the formality of the period, the splendidly sombre wateriness of the place and the robust passions of the people who lived there
Sunday Telegraph
A fine novel, both sad and tragic. His background descriptions are beautiful . . . while his evocation of the early nineteenth century, and his handling of the ever-interesting topic of English snobbery is impeccable
Irish Times
Compelling . . . Painted on a broad canvas, packed with detail, with characters, with interesting psychological issues, and sallies into the history of the years 1802-1803
Glasgow Herald
Very much enjoyed; a fine subject treated with great energy and imagination, and a gusto that Hazlitt would have admired
Richard Holmes
An ingenious telling of a romantic tragedy
Gore Vidal