The underside
This novel, set in Victorian London in its heyday, presents a picture, both horrific and authentic, of the 'underside' of life in the first city of the world.
It tells of Godfrey Mann, a young painter, who has access to the golden world of privilege and yet is possessed by a compelling sexual drive towards the hidden squalor and darkness below, a nostalgie de la boue that wars tumultuously both with his ideals as an artist and his love for the lion-couraged social reformer, Elizabeth. It is between Godfrey's reckless urges and Elizabeth's purity that truth must ultimately lie. And in working out this conflict of opposites, the story, though placed in an age whose fixed moral structure contrasts so forcibly with our permissiveness, has a meaning for today.
One copy is available
- Slight damage to the cover
- Yellowed pages
