The New Life

Like the Victorian classics that inspired it, The New Life is both political and deeply personal, illustrating how the Oscar Wilde indecency trial might have affected ordinary people.

If you’re a fan of Charles Dickens or Anthony Trollope and have always wondered what really went on behind Victorian bedroom doors, this book is for you. Tom Crewe places readers inside the bodies of his flawed and fascinating characters and sends them into the sooty nooks and crannies of 1890s London.

I was horribly envious of his visceral, immediate prose. If this wasn’t one of the best historical fiction novels I’ve… show more.

I usually read novels for relaxation, not historical information, but I made an exception for Tom Crewe’s excellent debut novel.

It relates the story, based on real lives, of the married John Addington, who starts a relationship with Frank, a working-class printer. Meanwhile, Edith, his friend Henry Ellis’s wife, falls in love with Angelica. John and Henry decide to explore their unusual relationships by writing Sexual Inversion together.

Their book sets out a new, rational way of living, but the publishers are soon put on trial for obscene libel, and both John and Henry are now in danger. How high… show more.