 Cover | |
| Author | Terry Pratchett |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Paul Kidby |
| Language | English |
| Set in | London, VE |
| Published | 13 September 2012 (UK), (Doubleday Children's) |
| Media type | |
| ISBN | 978-0385619271 |
Dodger is a novel written by Terry Pratchett, set in early Victorian London, and inspired by Charles Dickens's character the Artful Dodger. [1] The book was released on 13 September 2012 in the UK. [2]
One night on the streets of London, a battered young woman leaps from a carriage, followed and assaulted by two men. The protagonist Dodger, a street urchin and tosher, emerging from a sewer drain, comes to her help and chases away the attackers. This is witnessed by two gentlemen, Charlie and Henry, who take the girl to the latter's nearby home, accompanied by Dodger. A doctor treats her injuries and discovers that she was pregnant and the child is lost.
Dodger's actions impress the gentlemen, as does the genuine affection they quickly see growing between him and the girl, who is tentatively called Simplicity. Charlie gives Dodger the task of finding information on the streets about her and the carriage from which she escaped. During the next days, Dodger thwarts a robbery attempt at the offices of the Morning Chronicle when meeting Charlie, and causes the arrest of a murderous barber named Sweeney Todd when he tries to improve his appearance before meeting Simplicity. These incidents turn Dodger into a celebrity, which helps him gather information, but also make it impossible for him to stay anonymous. This endangers Simplicity and prompts Charlie to have her moved to the house of his rich friend Angela Burdett-Coutts.
Through their activities (and from the recovered Simplicity herself), Charlie and Dodger learn that the girl had secretly married a prince of one of the German states and thereby become an obstacle to a planned political marriage. Her husband had then done nothing against his family's decision to destroy all evidence of the unsanctioned marriage, including Simplicity herself – the vicar and two witnesses to the wedding have already been killed.
This political dimension of the case (along with his celebrity status) soon have Dodger meet some of the Empire's top politicians, such as Benjamin Disraeli and Robert Peel. He learns that the family of Simplicity's husband is pressuring the British government to return her, and that the government cannot outright refuse this demand. Additionally, a mysterious assassin known only as the Outlander is rumoured to be looking for Dodger and Simplicity.
Dodger decides that the only solution is to fake Simplicity's death. Through subterfuge, he acquires the body of a girl looking similar to Simplicity who had died through suicide, and prepares it to be found after a faked attack (during which the real Simplicity would hide) witnessed by Charlie and Disraeli during a planned excursion into London's sewers. The plan is nearly foiled when the Outlander appears, turning out to be a woman. However, with the help of Simplicity, Dodger manages to defeat the assassin and go through with the plan after all. The two young lovers hide a while in Somerset and then return to London, where Dodger has an audience with Queen Victoria and is offered work as a spy for the government, which he accepts as it suits his talents.
According to the author's afterword, the story is set "broadly in the first quarter of Queen Victoria's reign", which would be between 1837 and 1853. However, Pratchett had to "tweak" history a little to get the combination of persons he wanted in place: specifically, Sir Robert Peel is shown as Home Secretary, which he was under Victoria's predecessor William IV.
In November 2013, Pratchett released Dodger's Guide to London. [3]
Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield, was a British statesman, Conservative politician and writer who twice served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He played a central role in the creation of the modern Conservative Party, defining its policies and its broad outreach. Disraeli is remembered for his influential voice in world affairs, his political battles with the Liberal Party leader William Ewart Gladstone, and his one-nation conservatism or "Tory democracy". He made the Conservatives the party most identified with the British Empire and military action to expand it, both of which were popular among British voters. He is the only British Prime Minister to have been born Jewish.
Mary Anne Disraeli, 1st Viscountess Beaconsfield was a British peeress and society figure who was the wife of the British statesman Benjamin Disraeli.
The London sewer system is part of the water infrastructure serving London, England. The modern system was developed during the late 19th century, and as London has grown the system has been expanded. It is currently owned and operated by Thames Water and serves almost all of Greater London.
Angela Georgina Burdett-Coutts, 1st Baroness Burdett-Coutts, born Angela Georgina Burdett, was a British philanthropist, the daughter of Sir Francis Burdett, 5th Baronet and Sophia, formerly Coutts, daughter of banker Thomas Coutts. In 1837 she became one of the wealthiest women in England when she inherited her grandfather's fortune of around £1.8 million following the death of her stepgrandmother, Harriot Beauclerk, Duchess of St Albans. She joined the surnames of her father and grandfather, by royal licence, to become Burdett-Coutts. Edward VII is reported to have described her as "[a]fter my mother, the most remarkable woman in the kingdom".
Sir Francis Burdett, 5th Baronet was a British politician and Member of Parliament who gained notoriety as a proponent of universal male suffrage, equal electoral districts, vote by ballot, and annual parliaments. His commitment to reform resulted in legal proceedings and brief confinement to the Tower of London. In his later years he appeared reconciled to the very limited provisions of the 1832 Reform Act. He was the godfather of Francisco Burdett O'Connor, one of the famed Libertadores of the Spanish American wars of independence.
Thomas Coutts was a British banker. He was a founder of the banking house Coutts & Co.
Coutts & Co. is a British private bank and wealth manager headquartered in London, England.
Outlander is a historical fantasy novel by American writer Diana Gabaldon, first published in 1991. Initially set around the time of the Second World War, it focuses on nurse Claire Beauchamp, who travels through time to 18th-century Scotland, where she finds adventure and romance with the dashing Jamie Fraser. It is the first novel in the Outlander series, which is set to comprise ten books, nine of which have already been published. The television adaptation of the series premiered on Starz in the US on August 9, 2014.
London Labour and the London Poor is a work of Victorian journalism by Henry Mayhew. In the 1840s, he observed, documented and described the state of working people in London for a series of articles in a newspaper, the Morning Chronicle, which were later compiled into book form.
The Day They Robbed the Bank of England is a 1960 British crime film directed by John Guillermin and starring Aldo Ray, Elizabeth Sellars and Peter O'Toole. It was written by Howard Clewes and Richard Maibaum and based upon the 1959 novel of the same title by John Brophy.
William Lehman Ashmead Bartlett Burdett-Coutts, born William Lehman Ashmead-Bartlett, was an American-born British Conservative politician and social climber who sat in the House of Commons from 1885 to 1921.
One Life to Live is an American soap opera that was broadcast on the ABC network from July 1968 to January 2012, and online from April to August 2013. The series starts with One Life to Live storylines (1968–79). The plot continues in One Life to Live storylines (1980–89). The plot in the next decade is outlined in One Life to Live storylines (1990–1999) and the story concludes in One Life to Live storylines (2000–2013).
Batmen of All Nations are a group of fictional superheroes appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. The characters were inspired by the superhero Batman to fight crime in their respective countries. The group first appeared in Detective Comics #215. Later the Batmen of All Nations were renamed the International Club of Heroes, often known as just the Club of Heroes. Post-Crisis on Infinite Earths, they were named the Dome and were not inspired by Batman but the Justice Society of America.
A tosher is someone who scavenges in the sewers, a sewer-hunter, especially in London during the Victorian era. The word tosher was also used to describe the thieves who stripped valuable copper from the hulls of ships moored along the Thames. The related slang term "tosh" referred to valuables thus collected. Both "tosher" and "tosh" are of unknown origin.
A Private View at the Royal Academy, 1881 is a painting by the English artist William Powell Frith exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 1883. It depicts a group of distinguished Victorians visiting the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 1881, just after the death of the Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, whose portrait by John Everett Millais was included on a screen at the special request of Queen Victoria. The room is Gallery III, the largest and most imposing room at Burlington House.
Harriet Beauclerk, Duchess of St Albans was an Irish banker and actress who eventually starred at Drury Lane. She was successively the wife of banker Thomas Coutts and then of William Beauclerk, 9th Duke of St Albans. She was widely celebrated for her beauty, and she was painted by George Romney and Sir Thomas Lawrence.
Robert Knight (1768–1855) was an English reforming radical and Member of Parliament.
Marion Coutts is a British sculptor, photographer, filmmaker, author, and musician, known for her work as an installation artist and her decade as frontwoman for the band Dog Faced Hermans. In 2014 she published her critically acclaimed memoir, The Iceberg.
The Young Duke - a moral tale though gay is the third novel written by Benjamin Disraeli who would later become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Despite its moderate success, Disraeli came to dislike the novel which was a hindrance to his political career.
Georgiana Morson (1817-1880) was a British social reformer. She served as a matron for Urania Cottage, a house for what were then called "fallen women" (prostitutes) founded by Charles Dickens and Angela Burdett-Coutts, as well as the Foundling Hospital during the mid-nineteenth century.
