"At first glance this book looks like a racy romantic thriller, but before long you'll be embroiled in an ingenious solution to a literary mystery concerning 19th century novelist Anthony Trollope . With a cast of memorable characters, you'll be gripped by its inventiveness and joie de vivre"

(The Good Book Guide)

THE LOVE CHILD
by Antonia Swinson Hoddor & Stoughton, £16.99

In her second novel, Antonia Swinson draws once again on her specialist subject: financial difficulties among the artistic middle classes. Richard, an art dealer whose hefty inheritance has been lost by his mother, has a 'love child': the awkward, talented Katya, a painter. And Richard's second wife, Harriet, has inherited a Victorian portrait of an alluring and mys-terious woman.

The story, set in 1995, moves from fashionable Notting Hill to the fleshpots of Largs, from Glasgow's Mitchell library to the ruined Castle of Wemyss, and culminates in a fashion that would do Dynasty proud. Swinson's style is informative, bright and chatty, which occasionally makes one long for the opposite qualities - stillness, drama in shorter sentences, life without dress labels.

But she does turn a nice phrase: "In Harriet's mind the rope of Richard's financial commitments seemed to wind, like the chains round Marley's ghost, all the way down the stairs and into the square below, cash boxes dangling from it like a lethal charm bracelet." An entertaining, observant tale of money and mores.

Susie Maguire (Scotland on Sunday)

THE LOVE CHILD
by Antonia Swlnson, Hoddor & Stoughton, £16.99

Money is an aspect of life rarely touched upon in modern fiction. Most authors regard it as too vulgar a subject to win them consideration for really serious literary prizes. However Antonia Swinson knows that money exposes what really motivates people, an insight she shares with a markedly different author: Anthony Trollope. It is this aspect of The Love Child that lend particular interest to what might otherwise have been a routine slice of commercial fiction.

Harriet Longbridge - married to a feckless art dealer - is intrigued by a painting of a young Scottish woman inherited from her mother-in-law.

Her fascination takes her to Largs, where she finds love, success and a new path in life. Though it lurches into absurdity towards the end, it is entertaining and the way it weaves its disclosures about Trollope into a slick, racy narrative will probably infuriate academic scholars.

David Cunningham (The Scotsman, 26 August, 2000)

TROLLOPE CELEBRATIONS UPSET
BY THREAT OF NEW YEAR REVELATIONS

There is both good news and bad news for admirers of Anthony Trollope, arguably the best loved and most widely read today of the great Victorian novelists, as the anniversary of his death on December 6th, 1882 approaches.

Early next year a new book from acclaimed novelist and author of The Cousins’ Tale Antonia Swinson will be published in London by Hodder and Stoughton which for the first time will:

• Solve a long-standing mystery as to where exactly Anthony Trollope thought out and wrote the first portion of one of his most popular works Barchester Towers in the mid-winter of 1854/55.
• Reveal the setting and inspiration for another celebrated work The Eustace Diamonds, 1873.
• And explain why Trollope skilfully concealed this information and a secret private life, as public knowledge would have inevitably brought disgrace and a premature end to his other distinguished career as a senior British civil servant.

Trollope’s hidden life is inextricably bound up with the great commercial and maritime events of the mid Victorian era. It is a world of epoch making business exuberance, staggering luxury and questionable friendships lasting thirty years, the true nature of which has never been publicly revealed. Until now.

Antonia Swinson’s new novel The Love Child, which is set in London and Scotland in 1995, utilises Trollope’s secret life and his attempts at cover up, as a stunning backdrop for a plot which follows in the finest tradition of Possession.

However unlike Antonia Byatt’s Booker prize winning novel, Swinson’s work does actually solve a real long standing literary mystery which has taxed the intellects of the world’s leading Trollope scholars for decades, including the authors of four recent major biographies.

It is inevitable that the publication of Antonia Swinson’s The Love Child will lead to a major re-evaluation of the character of Anthony Trollope.

The Love Child will be published by Hodder and Stoughton early in 2000.

For further information please contact:
Karen Geary
Hodder and Stoughton
0171 873 6000

This document forms part of The Antonia Swinson Website • © 1999
Visit us again on http://www.antoniaswinson.co.uk or e-mail antonia swinson

Whoever saw a woman with real violet eyes?

Anthony Trollope apparently.

Visit the Anthony Trollope Page