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Description edit
Sir Richard Francis Burton--explorer, linguist, scholar, and swordsman; his reputation tarnished; his career in tatters; his former partner missing and probably dead. Algernon Charles Swinburne--unsuccessful poet and follower of de Sade; for whom pain is pleasure, and brandy is ruin! They... read more
Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit
Summary edit
time travel, what a pain.
Characters/People edit
- Richard Francis Burton: A famous explorer and geographer. Fluent in 24 languages and master of accents. A brave and dutifull soldier and servant of the realm. Stern and imposing. Just shy of 6", he nevertheless appears gigantic in stature. Gruff in appearance with a square jaw and hard chin, smouldering eyes that always seem to glower.
- Edward Oxford: Assassin of Queen Victoria. Born in Birmingham in 1822, one of seven children. Had an unhappy childhood with a drunken father who beat him regularly. Grew up to work in pubs in London's Eastend. Thought to be insane and hungered for infamy.
- Spring-Heeled Jack: A frightening, mysterious apparition that appears and vanishes seemingly randomly: Talll and emaciated with limbs long, thin, but wiry and strong. His head was encased in a large black, shiny, globular helmet around which a blue flame burned. From within the headgear red eyes, insane, glared at me. The face was skull-like: the cheeks sunken, the nose a blade, the mouth a slit. He wore a white skintight costume that resembled fish scales in texture. A lengthy black cloak with a white lining hung from his shoulders and a flat, circular lamplike affair was affixed to his chest, shining with a reddish light and emitting sparks. His hands were bony and talonlike. The feet and calves were encased by tight boots from which a springlike mechanism projected, attached to two-foot-high stilts.
- Henry Morton Stanley: Journalist. His background was somewhat mysterious; traces of a Welsh accent suggested he wasn't the authentic "Yankee" he claimed to be, and there were rumours that his name was false. He took a particular interest in the various expeditions organised by the Royal Geographical Society and befriended Doctor Livingstone.
- Algernon Charles Swinburne: A promising young poet of 24 years old with an intuitive intelligence, but gullible. Diminutive in stature with an excitable, high pitched voice. His movements were jerky, nervous. His limbs were small and delicate, with sloping shoulders and a very long neck upon which sat a large head made even bigger by a tousled mass of carroty-red hair standing almost at right angles to it. His mouth was weak and effeminate; his eyes huge, pale green, and dreamy.
- Henry De La Poer Beresford: 3rd Marquess of Waterford, in his youth a gambling, drunken playboy and founder of the Libertines, a group of self-confessed dissidents and anarchist. Later leading a splinter group with more radical views, called the Rakes. Said to be sadist and brutal towards women.
- Isabel Arundell: Burton's headstrong fiance. He loved her strength and practicality but resented her overbearing personality. She tolerated his fascination with the exotic and erotic, but was a devout Catholic.
- Charles Darwin: Add a description of this character.
- John Hanning Speke
- Laurence Oliphant
- Mrs. Iris Angell: Burton's landlady and housekeeper. She was a wide-hipped, white-haired old dame with a kindly face, square chin, and gloriously blue and generous eyes.
- Prime Minister Palmerston: A 77-year old man, having undergone extensive cosmetic surgery, leaving him looking like a wax sculpture. He dresses foppishly and behaves in an overly mannered way.
- Brock
- Sister Sadhvi Raghavendra
- Mary Stevens
- Jane Alsop
- Alicia Pipkiss
- Dick
- Montague Penniforth
- Francis Galton
- Lizzie Fraser
- Mrs. Wheeltapper
- Henry Beresford
- Krishnamurthy
- Sneed
- Charlie
- Detective Inspector Trounce
Quotes edit
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“"'The True Libertine points to the thousands of prostitutes on London's streets and says: 'Look! Sex for sale! This is what these woman - and men! - have resorted to in order to survive in this so-called civilisation! Where are your much-vaunted morals now, Society? Where is your restraint; your puritan ethic? And these prostitutes have customers! Men whose sexual tastes cannot be satisfied within your rules of so-called decency! You, Society, generate the very thing you denigrate!'"”
Algernon Charles Swinburne -
“"'The Rake, meanwhile, celebrates the sexual act as the one place where men and women are literally and metaphorically stripped naked and reduced to their purest nature - I mean 'pure' in the sense of unaffected; the one occasion when we are most liable to shed the artificial skin of Society and gain a sense of our own fundamental identity.'"”
Algernon Charles Swinburne -
“"I can sympathise with the general sentiment. Any intelligent man can see that the hypocritical politeness and studied mannerisms of our civilisation suppress and oppress in equal measure. They certainly serve to obliterate difference, enforcing a regime that discourages intellectual, emotional, and sexual freedoms. Far better for Society that its citizens are built according to its dictates, rather than in their own image. It makes them better slaves."”
Sir Richard Francis Burton -
“Conquer thyself, till thou has done this, thou art but a slave; for it is almost as well to be subjected to another's appetite as to thine own.”
Sir Richard Francis Burton
- Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers
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“‘When what you want doesn't happen, learn to want what does.’”
Highlighted by 18 Kindle customers -
When we blame ourselves, we feel no one else has a right to blame us. What a luxury that is!”
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Everything Life places in your path is an opportunity. No matter how difficult. No matter how upsetting. No matter how impenetrable. No matter how you judge it. An opportunity. —LIBERTINE PROPAGANDA
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The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. —CHARLES DARWIN
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“Well now, Captain, there's much to be said in favour of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.”
Highlighted by 6 Kindle customers -
Conquer thyself, till thou has done this, thou art but a slave; for it is almost as well to be subjected to another's appetite as to thine own.
Highlighted by 6 Kindle customers -
Do what thy manhood bids thee do, from none but self expect applause; He noblest lives and noblest dies who makes and keeps his self-made laws. —SIR RICHARD FRANCIS BURTON
Highlighted by 5 Kindle customers -
Laying his head back, and with eyes half closed, he focused his mind on his sense of hearing. It was a Sufi trick he'd learned en route to Mecca. Sight was the primary sense; when another was given precedence and the mind was allowed to wander, ideas, insights, and hitherto unseen connections often bubbled up from its otherwise inaccessible depths.
Highlighted by 3 Kindle customers -
It's in the British Empire's interest to portray other cultures as barbarous and uncivilised; that way there's less of an outcry when we conquer them and steal their resources. Lies have to be propagated if we are to retain the moral high ground.”
Highlighted by 3 Kindle customers -
From too much love of living, From hope and fear set free, We thank with brief thanksgiving Whatever gods may be That no life lives for ever; That dead men rise up never; That even the weariest river Winds somewhere safe to sea. —ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
Highlighted by 3 Kindle customers
First Sentence edit
By God! He's killed himself!
Table of Contents edit
The First Part: In Which an Agent is Appointed and Mysteries are Investigated
1. The Aftermath of Africa
2. The Thing the the Alley
3. The Commission
4. The Assassination
5. The Birth of the Libertines
6. The Hog in the Pound
7. The Cauldron
8. Marvel's Wood
9. The Battersea Brigade
10. Beetle and Panther
11. The Sweeps
12. The Resurrectionists
13. Dog, Cat, and Mouse
14. The Trail
15. Darkening Towers
The Second Part: Being the True History of Spring Heeled Jack
16. Prevention
17. Dissuasion
18. Preparation
19. Hunt
The Third Part: The Battle of Old Ford and Its Aftermath
20. Beresford Continues His Story
21. The Gathering Forces
22. The Battle of Old Ford
23. In Cold Blood
24. Conclusion
Appendix: Meanwhile, in the Victorian Age
Glossary edit
- Atmospheric Railway: It used wide-gauge tracks in the centre of which ran a fifteen-inch-diameter pipe. Along the top of the pipe there was a two-inch slot, covered with a flapvalve of oxhide leather. Beneath the front carriage of each train hung a dumbbell-shaped piston, which fitted snugly into the pipe. Every three miles along the track, a station sucked air out of the pipe in front of the train and pumped it back in behind. It was this difference in air pressure that shot the carriages along the tracks at tremendous speed.
- Postal Dog Runners: They were part of a fairly new communications system, these remarkable dogs, the first practical application of eugenics adopted by the British public. Each hound came into the world knowing every address within a fifty-mile radius of its birthplace and with the ability to carry mail between those locations, barking and scratching at a recipient's door until the letter was collected. After each task was completed, the runner would wander the streets until it heard another three-whistle summons.
- Velocipede: Steam-driven, one-man vehicles. It could complete a twenty-mile journey in about an hour on just one fist-sized lump of coal.
- Litter-crab: An automated steam powered, street cleaner. With eight thick mechanical legs and twenty-four thin arms on its belly snatching up rubbish and throwing it through the machine's maw into the furnace within.
- Rakes: A radical, extreme group of men who divided from the Libertines. Anarchist. Nihilist. They claim that all moral codes and social conventions are entirely artificial and that by following them a man is willingly allowing his authentic identity to be suppressed.
- Mega Dray: Product of Eugenics. Gigantic beasts that stood fifteen feet high at the shoulder and were immensely strong. The cargo wagons they towed were often the size of small houses.
Series & Lists edit
This is book 1 of 3 in Burton & Swinburne. (standard series)
Followed by The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man.
This is book 10 of 9 in Steampunk Scholar Top 10. (authoritative list)
Authors & Contributors edit
- Mark Hodder (Author)
First Edition edit
Original Language: English
Publisher: Pyr
Country: Add the country of publication.
Publication Date: 2010
ISBN: Add the ISBN.
Page Count: 373
Publisher: Pyr
Country: Add the country of publication.
Publication Date: 2010
ISBN: Add the ISBN.
Page Count: 373
Awards edit
- Philip K. Dick Award (2010)
Classification edit
- Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
- Dewey: 823.92
Subjects edit
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