The Victorian Chaise-longue

A postcard reproduction of the Islington house which is the setting for the book accompanies each copy; commissioned painting by David Gentleman.

PREFACE BY PD JAMES
120pp
ISBN 9780953478040

The Victorian Chaise-Longue first came out in 1953. It is a very short book, almost a novella, about a young married woman called Melly who lies down on a chaise-longue and wakes to find herself imprisoned in the body of another woman, Milly, ninety years before.

A twisted parody of Melly's comfortable former life unfolds: her doctor is condescending and leery, her sister is a sharp-tongued bully, and Melly herself is in disgrace for a crime of which she knows nothing. The horror and confusion of the body swap is quickly eclipsed by the horror and cruelty of Victorian social convention.

The critic Lisa Appignanesi has described it as 'rare instance of what one could call Gothic realism'. It also impressed Penelope Lively: ‘This is time travel fiction, but with a difference…  disturbing and compulsive... In the stifling, menacing atmosphere in which Melanie finds herself there is another dark, unspoken theme. Sex. Milly has been in some way disgraced… the chaise-longue is the hinge between the two planes of existence. The site of rapture, of ecstasy... ’ Meanwhile PD James, author of the Preface, described it as ‘one of the most skilfully told and terrifying short novels of its decade.’ 

The Victorian Chaise-Longue is a terrifying, strange and moving novel. It is sometimes compared to Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper, but with an addictive intensity, and much scarier. 

Also available as a Persephone e-book.

Endpaper

In the front is an early 1950s fabric ('the shiny cream curtains printed with huge pink roses', p.3) reproduced by courtesy of Sanderson & Sons. The back is taken from a panel of mid-nineteenth century Berlin woolwork © Townley Hall Art Gallery and Museum.