We’re excited to report that Lee Jackson’s Diary of a Murder will kick start our online book club. We hope that that the JVC book club will provide followers with a virtual platform to discover or rediscover books on the Victorian period, whether they are from the period or Neo-Victorian.
Lee describes his book as follows:
“The Diary of a Murder revolves around the death of a middle-class housewife, Dora Jones, brutally killed in her own home. Her missing husband, Jacob, is the only suspect – until the police discover his diary. The reader must study the pages of the diary to learn the truth. It’s my attempt to create a distinctive Victorian detective story, drawing on the epistolary tradition in the Victorian novel but taking things in a slightly different direction. I think it’s an unusual and distinctive format, and also allows me to explore the minutiae of daily life in a typical middle-class household. It’s essentially The Diary of a Nobody told as murder mystery.”
Many of you will know Lee Jackson from his excellent website Victorian London, which is an anthology of nineteenth-century texts on the metropolis. He is also the author of Walking Dickens London and has recently published a book on nineteenth-century crossing-sweepers, chimney-sweeps and dustmen entitled Dust, Mud, Soot and Soil: The Worst Jobs in Victorian London. You can follow him on twitter @victorianlondon.
We would love for you to join us on this murder mystery tour. Lee has kindly agreed to do a Q&A session on the book. Questions can be emailed directly to Lucie at l.m.matthew-jones@ljmu.ac.uk by 13th May 2011.
Next book: Anne Featherstone’s The Newgate Jig – details to follow
If you would like to recommend or lead a book club then get in contact. Don’t forget that you can suggest classic, hidden gem or Neo-Victorian texts!