The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled JackLondon, 1861. Sir Richard Francis Burton - explorer, linguist, scholar, and swordsman; his reputation tarnished; his career in tatters; his former partner missing and probably dead. Algernon Charles Swinburne - unsuccessful poet and follower of de Sade, for whom pain is pleasure, and brandy is ruin! They stand at a crossroads in their lives and are caught in the epicenter of an empire torn by conflicting forces: Engineers transform the landscape with bigger, faster, noisier, and dirtier technological wonders; Eugenicists develop specialist animals to provide unpaid labor; Libertines oppose repressive laws and demand a society based on beauty and creativity; while the Rakes push the boundaries of human behavior to the limits with magic, drugs, and anarchy. The two men are sucked into the perilous depths of this moral and ethical vacuum when Lord Palmerston commissions Burton to investigate assaults on young women committed by a weird apparition known as Spring Heeled Jack, and to find out why werewolves are terrorizing London's East End. Their investigations lead them to one of the defining events of the age, and the terrifying possibility that the world they inhabit shouldn't exist at all! |
Contents
Section 1 | 13 |
Section 2 | 81 |
Section 3 | 93 |
Section 4 | 105 |
Section 5 | 121 |
Section 6 | 159 |
Section 7 | 175 |
Section 8 | 185 |
Section 11 | 233 |
Section 12 | 243 |
Section 13 | 265 |
Section 14 | 275 |
Section 15 | 285 |
Section 16 | 305 |
Section 17 | 321 |
Section 18 | 329 |
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Common terms and phrases
albino Algernon Algernon Charles Swinburne Algernon Swinburne Algy Alsop Battersea beneath Beresford Captain Burton Carter the Lamp-lighter chest chimney sweeps Constable cried damned Darkening Towers Darwin desk Detective Inspector Trounce door Edward Oxford exclaimed eyes face feet fell Fidget front girl hand head Henry Isabel Isambard Kingdom Brunel John Hanning Speke John Speke king's agent later laughed Laurence Oliphant legs Letty Green Libertines London looked Lord Palmerston marquess mouth moved muttered never nodded Old Carter Old Ford opened Palmerston parakeet passed past Penniforth penny-farthings pistol poet pulled pushed replied Richard Francis Burton rotorchair screamed shoulder shouted side Sir Richard Francis Sister Raghavendra snapped soot Speke Spring Heeled Jack steam stepped stilt-man stilt-walker stood stopped Street suddenly Swinburne Swinburne's swordstick Technologist tell There's thing took turned Victoria voice wait walked wall who'd window