Product Description

It is eighteenth century London and John Lempriere, a young scholar, is writing a dictionary of classical mythology in an attempt to exorcise the demons raised by his father's bizarre and violent death. While tending to his father's business affairs, Lempriere discovers a 150-year-old conspiracy that has kept his family from its share of the fabulously wealthy East India Company, but as John begins to untangle the years of mystery and deceit, people begin to die, in ways that mirror the very myths he is researching...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #234448 in Books
• Published on: 1998-01-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 640 pages

Review
In 1600 the first ships of the newly formed East India Company set sail from England. In France, a few years later, the Huguenots of La Rochelle were crushed at the end of an epic siege. And towards the end of the next century a scholarly youth, John Lempriere, set forth from Jersey on the journey which would see the publication of his acclaimed Classical Dictionary in 1788. Around these historical facts Lawrence Norfolk has woven an intriguing web of conspiracy, revenge and murder which reaches across the centuries. It is a rich and assured first novel, confident in its structure, lush in its prose, with a central mystery which will tease and intrigue readers as they attempt to unravel it through this massive and vivid portrait of life at the end of the 18th century. (Kirkus UK)

A masterful debut from Londoner Norfolk that delves into 18th-century commerce by way of classical mythology, suggesting grim secrets behind the spectacular success of the East India Company - secrets that have root in the mass suicide of Huguenots under siege in the French port city of Rochelle more that a century earlier. Deftly merging history, classical allusions, and fabulous fantasy, in a style that merits comparison to Dickens as well as Gilbert & Sullivan, Norfolk conjures up an imaginary life of John Lempriere, actual author of a popular precursor to Bullfinch's Mythology. As an awkward young man on the isle of Jersey, John witnesses his father's violent death when assaulted by a pack of savage hounds owned by neighbor Viscount Casterleigh, whose daughter John loves with paralyzing passion. Then, while settling his father's estate in London, he learns of a mysterious contract between a distant Huguenot ancestor and an English earl, and his interest in it grows as he makes contact with others who fill in pieces of the puzzle. Meanwhile, in caverns deep beneath the city, a cabbala plots to lure young Lempriere into their midst using member Casterleigh's daughter as bait; an assassin from the Indian Nawab' palace stalks the two; a ship full of ancient mariners, pirates all, plies its way to the London docks in pursuit of a cargo of sulphur from which to make gunpowder; and unrest among city laborers and the lower classes grows, incited by the firebrand Farina. Lempriere comes face-to-face with the cabbala in their lair, where he finds their leader to he his own distant ancestor and learns why he was encouraged to write his dictionary, triggering a larger conflagration as the assassin, pirates, and the mob make their moves while the evil Company is destroyed, literally, by an avenging angel. Wildly and wonderfully improbable, reveling in the countless allusions that feed its dark vision: a delight for classicists, historians, and any reader eager to be overwhelmed by a story. An exceptional achievement. (Kirkus Reviews)

About the Author
Lawrence Norfolk was born in London in 1963. He read English at King's College, London, graduating in 1986. He began teaching, studied for a Ph.D., and worked as a freelance writer on a number of reference books, contributing articles and reviews to magazines and journals including the Times Literary Supplement. He has written three novels; Lempriere's Dictionary, Pope's Rhinoceros and In the Shape of a Boar.

Customer Reviews

A good read for a patient reader.
Lemprière's Dictionary

When 'Lemprière's Dictionary' was originally published in 1991, the reviews were almost all favourable. Reading the novel years later in paperback, I agree that it is in most ways all that the critics said it was. It is not a quick or easy read and is clotted in some places with classical references perhaps extracted from the classical dictionary that provides its title. I presume that the writer had access to a copy of that reference book while he was conceiving and writing his own literary tapestry.

There are charming passages and some turgid parts; I liked his walks through old London and was impressed by his descriptions of ports and ships and by his overviews of periods and events in European history. There is less that I found comic but perhaps that is too personal.

What I often found myself troubled by was the recreation, complete with equally fictional father, of the original John Lemprière as the sniggering and not always attractive fictional character in the novel. The real life John Lemprière was first a schoolmaster and then an ordained minister of the Church of England. His dictionary remained popular into the twentieth century... I cannot but feel that the licence allowed for the writing of a historical novel has been somewhat exceeded.

I put the book down a number of times. But I picked it up again and was glad I did.

A good read for a patient reader.
Lemprière's Dictionary

When 'Lemprière's Dictionary' was originally published in 1991, the reviews were almost all favourable. Reading the novel years later in paperback, I agree that it is in most ways all that the critics said it was. It is not a quick or easy read and is clotted in some places with classical references perhaps extracted from the classical dictionary that provides its title. I presume that the writer had access to a copy of that reference book while he was conceiving and writing his own literary tapestry.

There are charming passages and some turgid parts; I liked his walks through old London and was impressed by his descriptions of ports and ships and by his overviews of periods and events in European history. There is less that I found comic but perhaps that is too personal.

What I often found myself troubled by was the recreation, complete with equally fictional father, of the original John Lemprière as the sniggering and not always attractive fictional character in the novel. The real life John Lemprière was first a schoolmaster and then an ordained minister of the Church of England. His dictionary remained popular into the twentieth century and can be found, at a price, through Amazon. I cannot but feel that the licence allowed for the writing of a historical novel has been somewhat exceeded.

I put the book down a number of times. But I picked it up again and was glad I did.

Unequal to the task imposed by his own ambition
The reviewers claimed this as a 'masterpiece' and a 'tour de force'. I don't know, to me it had the air of a book that had been struggled with over a long period and almost given up in despair several times. Although there were some good things in it, the pacing was rather pedestrian and both this and the novel's length mitigated against the generation of much suspense. Some ruthless editing could well have sharpened up its impact. As yet the author just didn't seem up to the task his own ambition had imposed. And in order to maintain interest in such a ludicrously convoluted plot, I think you need more vivid characterization - his people were just too pallidly drawn.