Set in late eighteenth-century England, Philippa Stockley's American debut gives us a wickedly delightful but deadly serious battle of the wills and the sexes. It begins with the arrival in London of the mysterious Mrs. Fox. On the run from a scandalous French past, she takes on a new identity, determined to rehabilitate herself. To do so she must pit her formidable skills for revenge against Earl Much, a British aristocrat with no less notorious a past and easily her match in sinfulness and intrigue. Between these two swirls a story featuring venal lords, wronged maidens, and reprobate clergymen, transporting readers from bawdy houses to country estates-places where the pleasures of the flesh are both high comedy and serious business.
A Factory of Cunning takes readers to the world immortalized in Dangerous Liaisons. And, like Michel Faber's The Crimson Petal and the White, the vividly rendered setting and characters give the thrill of a fresh discovery.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Review:
PRAISE FOR "A FACTORY OF CUNNING"
"Deliciously wicked."--"The Washington Post Book World"
""A Factory of Cunning" is a well-made entertainment for people who don't go soft at the prospect of corsets and powdered wigs. The 18th-century milieu Stockley describes is so ruthless and exploitative that any shred of sentiment attached to the better-dressed past will be burnt to ashes on contact. Stockley's fidelity to the period and its language is nearly faultless."--Salon.com
PRAISE FOR "A FACTORY OF CUNNING"
"Deliciously wicked."--"The Washington Post Book World"
""A Factory of Cunning" is a well-made entertainment for people who don't go soft at the prospect of corsets and powdered wigs. The 18th-century milieu Stockley describes is so ruthless and exploitative that any shred of sentiment attached to the better-dressed past will be burnt to ashes on contact. Stockley's fidelity to the period and its language is nearly faultless."--Salon.com
PRAISE FOR A FACTORY OF CUNNING
"Deliciously wicked."--The Washington Post Book World
"A Factory of Cunning is a well-made entertainment for people who don't go soft at the prospect of corsets and powdered wigs. The 18th-century milieu Stockley describes is so ruthless and exploitative that any shred of sentiment attached to the better-dressed past will be burnt to ashes on contact. Stockley's fidelity to the period and its language is nearly faultless."--Salon.com
Book Description:
*A major novel with a plot full complex twists and turns, all told in an extraordinarily accurate 18th Century voice, by an extremely talented writer.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherHoughton Mifflin Harcourt
- Publication date2005
- ISBN 10 0151011729
- ISBN 13 9780151011728
- BindingHardcover
- Number of pages355
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Rating