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Emancipation
Hugh Small is the author of Florence Nightingale, Avenging Angel (Constable, 1998) and The Crimean Europe's Conflict with Russia (History Press, 2018), Both books are highly praised for their astonishing revelations about British politics and social reform during the most dynamic period of Queen Victoria's reign.
His new book Emancipation sheds new light on the most significant social reform of the the grant of voting rights to working households. It tells the story as fiction because the millions who achieved reform are unremembered. The novel's characters are a fictional sample of the newly-empowered working class that made democracy
A junior army officer, under a cloud for mutiny, and the wealthy society hostess whom he courts in search of social advancement. An Irish soldier who deserted and went native in Russia and was forcibly repatriated to Britain as a revolutionary with Tsarist spies on his tail. A child rescued from a high-society London brothel. A radical woman journalist. The daughter of a Marquess who disowns her title. A criminal who enlists to escape the gallows.
These people, linked by complex and evolving relationships, all have a restless desire for change heightened by wartime experiences. The achievements of the politicians and reformers whom history credits for social progress in the period seem thin by comparison.
His new book Emancipation sheds new light on the most significant social reform of the the grant of voting rights to working households. It tells the story as fiction because the millions who achieved reform are unremembered. The novel's characters are a fictional sample of the newly-empowered working class that made democracy
A junior army officer, under a cloud for mutiny, and the wealthy society hostess whom he courts in search of social advancement. An Irish soldier who deserted and went native in Russia and was forcibly repatriated to Britain as a revolutionary with Tsarist spies on his tail. A child rescued from a high-society London brothel. A radical woman journalist. The daughter of a Marquess who disowns her title. A criminal who enlists to escape the gallows.
These people, linked by complex and evolving relationships, all have a restless desire for change heightened by wartime experiences. The achievements of the politicians and reformers whom history credits for social progress in the period seem thin by comparison.
278 pages, Paperback
Published July 14, 2025
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