I’ve recently reissued my first novel, To The Fair Land , with a new cover. Set in the eighteenth century during the Age of Sail, it tells the story of struggling writer Ben Dearlove’s quest to discover the anonymous author of a best-selling book about a fictitious voyage to the South Seas. Far from engaging in a genteel literary pursuit, Ben finds himself up against some ruthless people who will lie, steal and even kill to stop him. The new cover of To The Fair Land Both the British Royal and merchant navies were all-male preserves. However, female sailors were not unknown in the Age of Sail. Wives accompanied their husbands in Nelson’s warships. They helped to tend the sick, and during battles carried powder to the guns or looked after the wounded. Officially, though, they were not part of the ship’s muster, and so they were not paid or provisioned. Some women didn’t travel as wives. There are many stirring tales of women who disguised themselves as men in order to go to sea. Tal
I've picked out two of the books I read this month which look, in their different ways, at issues around women's agency in a patriarchal society. First is The Invader , a novel by Hilda Vaughan. It's followed by John Sutherland's biography of Mrs Mary Ward. The Invader, Hilda Vaughan (William Heinemann, 1928) The Invader is Welsh author Hilda Vaughan’s ( 1892–1985) third novel. Daniel Evans is a sheep farmer whose Welsh hill farm is centred around the eighteenth-century house, Plas Newydd. The farm belongs to an absent English landlord who has no interest in it apart from receiving the rents. Daniel passionately loves his house and his land and has been saving up for years to buy the property. He is one lambing season short of raising the capital. Disaster strikes when the owner dies and the property is inherited by English woman Miss Webster, who teaches in an agricultural college. Miss Webster decides to farm the land herself, and Daniel is ousted and rele