Near fine condition.Little,Brown,2003.First UK edition-first printing.Black hardback(gilt lettering to the spine,crease and nick on the edge of the back cover) with Dj(small tear on the edge of the front Dj cover,a couple of small nicks and creases on the edges of the Dj cover),both in near fine condition.Nice and clean pages as new with light shelf wear on the outer edges.Nice and clean book with light shelf wear on the Dj cover.440pp including Afterword.Price clipped.Heavy book. This is another paragraph Review: Before she died in 1855, Charlotte Bronte completed two chapters of a new novel with the working title Emma. Boylan has constructed her own novel from this tantalizing fragment, in which a girl is deposited at a provincial boarding school under a cloud of mystery. The melodramatic plot revolves around the girl's search for her true identity. Boylan makes use of the characters introduced by Bronte and attempts to borrow her voice by using lines from her letters. She also plunges her heroine into a Dickensian foray into London's slums on the assumption that Charlotte would have wanted to use her own impressions of London as material for her fiction. Whether this novel is anything like the one Charlotte would have written is beside the point; Boylan's work succeeds on its own as a compelling tale. Though rather tame compared to Sarah Waters' Fingersmith (2002) and Michel Faber's The Crimson Petal and the White (2002), it should appeal to readers fascinated by Victorian England and its underside.
