Secret sex lives in Victorian England

John Self

NEW YEAR, NEW LIFE. As we march under cover of bravado into 2023, the first piece of good news is an impressive debut novel whose achievement largely matches its ambition. The New Life by Tom Crewe, an editor at the London Review of Books, is a story set in late Victorian England of men and women we would now call gay — even queer — but for whom the language then was still developing terms. “Inverts” is the preferred epithet in the novel, though one character, casually, prefers “sods”. At the book’s heart is John Addington, married man, father of three, writer and trustafarian (as it wasn’t then called), pushing 50 and only now deciding to live as his homosexual nature dictates. “Is this happening again? Just say,” inquires his…

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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, February 2023

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