The Harlot's Press: A Novel

by HelenPike (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2011

  $3.47

  Set during the reign of George IV in the tumultuous summer of 1820, The Harlot's Press follows Nell Wingfield, a gutsy seventeen-year old print-maker of satirical political pamphlets. Nell's mother is dead, her 'blackamoor' stepfather - a liberated slave from Jamaica who officially runs the print shop, but whose real vocation is that of God-botherer and rebel - has just been released from jail, and her brother Tom is about to be hanged for treason. Nell herself has recently returned after a six-month absence that she would rather not explain. Distraught after her mother's death and more than a little naive, she was duped into working at one of the 'Houses of the Quality', the brothels on St James's, where she found herself turning tricks with men at the heart of the English establishment. When one of them, a key protagonist in the plot to keep Caroline of Brunswick from the throne, is murdered in his bed, it is time for Nell to flee. For she has had more than a commercial relationship with this man, and knows that his political enemies will exploit this in an attempt to pin the murder on her...The Harlot's Press is a romping historical drama, in which St James's and Cheapside, royalty and the rabble become thrillingly entangled as Nell battles to stay alive. This plucky young printeress will show you a London that your history lessons might well have kept from you -