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Overview
"After killing the red-haired man, I took myself off to Quinn's for an oyster supper." So begins the "enthralling" (Booklist, starred review) and "ingenious" (Boston Globe) story of Edward Glyver, booklover, scholar, and murderer. As a young boy, Glyver always believed he was destined for greatness. A chance discovery convinces him that he was right: greatness does await him, along with immense wealth and influence. Overwhelmed by his discovery, he will stop at nothing to win back a prize that he knows is rightfully his.
Glyver's path to reclaim his prize leads him from the depths of Victorian London, with its foggy streets, brothels, and opium dens, to Evenwood, one of England's most beautiful and enchanting country houses, and finally to a consuming love for the beautiful but enigmatic Emily Carteret. His is a story of betrayal and treachery, of death and delusion, of ruthless obsession and ambition. And at every turn, driving Glyver irresistibly onward, is his deadly rival: the poet-criminal Phoebus Rainsford Daunt.
The Meaning of Night is an enthralling novel that will captivate readers right up to its final thrilling revelation.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780393330342 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 10/17/2007 |
| Edition description: | Reprint |
| Pages: | 722 |
| Sales rank: | 525,863 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.50(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Editor’s Preface
The following work, printed here for the first time, is one of the lost curiosities of nineteenth-century literature. It is a strange concoction, being a kind of confession, often shocking in its frank, conscienceless brutality and explicit sexuality, that also has a strongly novelistic flavour; indeed, it appears in the hand-list that accompanies the Duport papers in the Cambridge University Library with the annotation ‘(Fiction?)’. Many of the presented facts — names, places, events (including the unprovoked murder of Lucas Trendle) — that I have been able to check are verifiable; others appear dubious at best or have been deliberately falsified, distorted, or simply invented. Real people move briefly in and out of the narrative, others remain unidentified — or unidentifiable — or are perhaps pseudonymous. As the author himself says, ‘The boundaries of this world are forever shifting — from day to night, joy to sorrow, love to hate, and from life itself to death.’ And, he might have added, from fact to fiction.
As to the author, despite his desire to confess all to posterity, his own identity remains a tantalizing mystery. His name as given here, Edward Charles Glyver, does not appear in the Eton Lists of the period, and I have been unable to trace it or any of his pseudonyms in any other source, including the London Post-office Directories for the relevant years. Perhaps, after we have read these confessions, this should not surprise us; yet it is strange that someone who wished to lay his soul bare to posterity in this way chose not to reveal his real name. I simply do not know how to account for this, but note the anomaly in the hope that further research, perhaps by other scholars, may unravel the mystery.
His adversary Phoebus Daunt, on the other hand, is real enough. The main events of his life may be traced in various contemporary sources. He may be found, for instance, in both the Eton Lists and in Venn’s Alumni Cantabrigienses, and is mentioned in several literary memoirs of the period — though on his supposed criminal career the historical record is silent. On the other hand, his now (deservedly) forgotten literary works, consisting principally of turgid historical and mythological epics and a few slight volumes of poems and poetic translations, once enjoyed a fleeting popularity. They may still be sought out by the curious in specialist libraries and booksellers’ catalogues (as can his father’s edition of Catullus, mentioned in the text), and perhaps may yet furnish some industrious PhD student with a dissertation subject.
The text has been transcribed, more or less verbatim, from the unique holograph manuscript now held in the Cambridge University Library. The manuscript came to the CUL in 1948 as part of an anonymous bequest, with other papers and books relating to the Duport family of Evenwood in Northamptonshire. It is written, for the most part, in a clear and confident hand on large-quarto lined sheets, the whole being bound in dark-red morocco (by R. Riviere, Great Queen Street) with the Duport arms blocked in gold on the front. Despite a few passages where the author’s hand deteriorates, apparently under psychological duress, or perhaps as a result of his opium habit, there are relatively few deletions, additions, or other amendments. In addition to the author’s narrative there are several interpolated documents and extracts by other hands.
I have made a number of silent emendments in matters of orthography, punctuation, and so on; and because the MS lacks a title, I have used a phrase from one of the prefatory quotations, the source of which is a poem, appropriately enough, from the pen of P. Rainsford Daunt himself. I have also supplied titles for each of the five parts, and for the five sections of the so-called Intermezzo.
The sometimes enigmatic Latin titles to the forty-seven sections or chapters have been retained (their idiosyncrasy seemed typical of the author), though I have provided translations. On the first leaf of the manuscript are a dozen or so quotations from Owen Felltham’s Resolves, some of which I have used as epigraphs to each of the five parts. Throughout the text, my own editorial interpolations and footnotes are given within square brackets.
J.J. Antrobus
Professor of Post-Authentic Victorian Fiction
University of Cambridge
Reading Group Guide
1. Do you find Edward Glyver (Glapthorn) an appealing main character? Why, or why not?
2. What is the importance of fate in The Meaning of Night? How does it change over the course of the book?
3. How do the footnotes provided by the “editor” change your impressions of The Meaning of Night?
4. What does the inclusion of Glyver’s poetic (sometimes opium-fuelled) dreams add to the novel?
5. What are the meanings of the title, The Meaning of Night?
6. Do you think The Meaning of Night would make an entertaining film? Why so–or why not? Who would you cast as the protagonists of your film version, and who would you have direct?
7. In an interview, Michael Cox wondered whether Edward Glyver might suffer from a certain weakness:
“He’s so sure of himself. He describes himself as resourceful, street-wise, physically strong, intellectually strong. He thinks that pretty much anything that is thrown at him, whether it’s physical or mental, he can deal with. But in fact he gets it wrong all the time. Miscomprehension is one of his major flaws, and that is a kind of blindness.”
What does Glyver get wrong in the novel? Is he a reliable narrator?
8. How does London differ from Evenwood in The Meaning of Night? How are they described? Is there a sense in which these settings might be considered “characters” in the novel?
9. If you were to meet Michael Cox, what would you ask him about his book or his characters?
10. What other books would you compare The Meaning of Night to? Do you find the book more similar to works by contemporary authors or Victorian ones?
11. Who do you find the most compelling secondary character in the book, and why?
12. What are your criticisms of The Meaning of Night? What would you have liked to see more, or less of, if anything?
13. Does reading The Meaning of Night change your sense of the Victorian era? How?
14. Do you find the conclusion of the novel satisfying?
15. Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why, or why not?