Sedition

Description

Motherless Alathea Sawneyford, her charms grown disturbing as she rebels against her father, has made the city's streets her own, while Annie Cantabile is constrained, by her own disfigurement and her father, to his pianoforte workshop under the shadow of Tyburn gibbet. One afternoon the dusty workshop receives a visitor. A man, representing an unscrupulous band of City speculators, Alathea's father among them, require a pianoforte and its charming teacher to find titled husbands for all their daughters: sisters Evelina and Marianne; stolid Harriet and pale, pining Georgiana. It seems an innocent enough plan but these are subversive times and perhaps even a drawing-room piano lesson isn't exactly what it seems. All of which will suit Alathea perfectly. Fierce and bawdy, uproarious and exquisite, Sedition takes its plot at a racing gallop: bold, beautiful and captivating

Promotion info

London 1794. Revolution creeps across the channel, the coffee-houses brew gossip and the great City seethes with emigres, upstarts and opportunists. Among them, restless young women, two of whom want more than a husband...

Awards

Long-listed for Desmond Elliott Prize 2014.

Author description

Katharine Grant was born into a family described by Lord Burghley, Treasurer to Elizabeth 1st, as of 'more than usual perversity' Her five times great uncle, Francis Towneley, was the last person in the UK to be hung drawn and quartered- for sedition. Katharine grew up on the edge of the Lancashire moors with five sisters and one brother and, sometimes using family stories, has written nine novels for children and young adults. She has written regularly for most newspapers in Scotland and is currently the Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow at the University of Glasgow. Sedition is her first novel for adults. She lives in Glasgow.