Slammerkin: The compelling historical novel from the author of LEARNED BY HEART

Emma Donoghue

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Virago Modern Classics, Fiction, Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)

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Virago
- Paperback Mar 1, 2011 | 9781844087341 | RRP $26.99 Buy Now
- Audiobook Aug 30, 2012 | 9781405521567 | RRP $30.99 Buy Now
- e-Book Aug 11, 2011 | 9780748133444 | RRP $12.99 Buy Now
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Little, Brown Audio
- Paperback Mar 1, 2011 | 9781844087341 | RRP $26.99 Buy Now
- Audiobook Aug 30, 2012 | 9781405521567 | RRP $30.99 Buy Now
- e-Book Aug 11, 2011 | 9780748133444 | RRP $12.99 Buy Now
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Imprint

Virago
- Paperback Mar 1, 2011 | 9781844087341 | RRP $26.99 Buy Now
- Audiobook Aug 30, 2012 | 9781405521567 | RRP $30.99 Buy Now
- e-Book Aug 11, 2011 | 9780748133444 | RRP $12.99 Buy Now
Play Sample
0:00

A gripping historical novel, based on a true story, which tells the tale of a girl born into rough cloth who hungered for lace and was hanged for murder in 1763.

Set in London and Monmouth in the late 1700s, this is an extraordinary novel about Mary Saunders, the young daughter of a poor seamstress. Mary hungers greedily for fine clothes and ribbons, as people of her class do for food and warmth. It's a hunger that lures her into prostitution at the age of thirteen. Mary is thrown out by her distraught mother when she gets pregnant and almost dies on the dangerous streets of London. Her saviour is Doll - a prostitute. Mary roams London freely with Doll, selling her body to all manner of 'cullies', dressed whorishly in colourful, gaudy dresses with a painted red smile.

Faced with bad debts and threats upon her life she eventually flees to Monmouth, her mother's hometown, where she attempts to start a new life as a maid in Mrs Jones's house. But Mary soon discovers that she can't escape her past and just how dearly people like her pay for yearnings not fitting to their class in society...

Emma Donoghue

Born in Dublin in 1969, Emma Donoghue is an award-winning writer, living in Canada with her family. Her novels are Room, The Sealed Letter, Landing, Life Mask, Slammerkin, Hood and Stir-fry; short-story collections Astray, Three and a Half Deaths (UK ebook), Touchy Subjects, The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits, and Kissing the Witch; and literary history including Inseparable, We Are Michael Field, and Passions Between Women as well as two anthologies that span the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. Frog Music, her new novel, comes out in Spring 2014.