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Summary | Excerpt | Reading Guide | Reviews | Beyond the Book | Read-Alikes | Genres & Themes | Author Bio
A Confession
by Michael Cox
Book Reviewed by:This article relates to The Meaning of Night
In the acknowledgments for The
Meaning of Night, Michael Cox notes
that three real places contributed in
various ways, to the making of Evenwood,
the extremely grand private estate at
the heart of this novel. These are
Drayton House and
Deene Park, both in Northamptonshire and
Burghley House. If you have plans
to read this book, or have read it, it's
worth a few minutes of your time to
visit these houses online, to get a
sense of what Evenwood would have been
like.
Books are an integral part of the
intricate plot of The Meaning of
Night. Cox says that Lord Tansor's
library is "based unashamedly on that of
the 2nd Earl Spencer (1758-1834) at
Althorp". The 40,000 item book
collection that used to be housed at
Althrop was purchased from the 5th Earl
Spencer by Mrs Enriqueta Augustina
Rylands in 1892. It now forms the
heart of the library she built in memory
of her late husband, John Rylands, now
known as the
John Rylands University Library of
Manchester.
For those of a particularly curious
nature, here is a
picture of the library at Althorp
Castle, where the books were originally
housed (if Althorp sounds familiar to
you, it is likely to be because it is
where "Lady Di", the former Princess of
Wales, spent her childhood, and where
she is buried.)
When it comes to acknowledging literary
and factual sources on which he drew,
Cox says that these are too numerous,
too scattered and, in many cases, too
obvious, to list in full. However, he
does direct interested readers to the
Victorian Dictionary website, which
certainly does appear to be an extremely
in-depth and fascinating resource for
anyone interested in the Victorian
period (which, at the risk of pointing
out the obvious, refers to the reign of
Queen Victoria, the longest reigning
monarch in English history (1837-1901)
whose reign coincided with Britain's
great age of imperial and industrial
expansion.
This "beyond the book article" relates to The Meaning of Night. It originally ran in October 2006 and has been updated for the
October 2007 paperback edition.
Go to magazine.
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