A Sultry Month by Alethea Hayter

A Sultry Month

Scenes of London Literary Life in 1846

by Alethea Hayter

Faber and Faber, 2022
First edition
Black and white photographic plates
Paperback with wraps

Condition: Near Fine
minor edge and shelf wear with minor rubbing and bumping to corners and covers (see photographs)

“June 1846.  As London swelters in a heatwave – sunstroke strikes, meat rots, ice is coveted – a glamorous coterie of writers and artists spend their summer wining, dining and opining.
With the ringleted ‘face of an Egyptian cat goddess’, Elizabeth Barrett is courted by her secret fiancé, the poet Robert Browning, who plots their elopement to Italy; Wordsworth visits the zoo; Dickens is intrigued by Tom Thumb; Tennyson plans a summer holiday; the Carlyles host parties for a visiting German novelist and suffer a marital crisis.  But when the visionary painter Benjamin Robert Haydon commits suicide, they find their entwined lives spiralling around the tragedy…
One of the first ever biographies, Alethea Hayter’s glorious A Sultry Month is a lively mosaic of archival riches inspired by the collages of the Pop Artists.  A groundbreaking feat of creative non-fiction in 1965, her portrait of Victorian London’s literati is just as vivid, witty and enticing today.”