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Bedlam
A Novel
Series: Verso Fiction
Brief Description
Bedlam is inspired by a year in the life of Richard Dadd, a great Victorian painter and inmate of London’s Bethlem Hospital. It's a poetic and considered portrait of an artist, as well as an intriguing mystery about how, and why, a mind can go so...
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See moreThe debut novel from one of our most acclaimed art critics takes us into the tortured, strange and surprising mind of the Victorian painter Richard Dadd, painter of fairies and murderer of his father.
The debut novel from one of our most acclaimed art critics takes us into the tortured, strange and surprising mind of the Victorian painter Richard Dadd, painter of fairies and murderer of his father.
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Description
Bedlam is inspired by a year in the life of Richard Dadd, a great Victorian painter and inmate of London’s Bethlem Hospital. It's a poetic and considered portrait of an artist, as well as an intriguing mystery about how, and why, a mind can go so swiftly and dangerously awry.
In 1842 Dadd took a Grand Tour of Europe and the Middle East. Within a year he had become a devotee of the god Osiris, and then become a killer, acting under the assumed direction of the Egyptian divinity.
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Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9781836742043
Publisher: Verso Books
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 14 July 2026
Country: United Kingdom
Imprint: Verso Books
Edition: Paperback original
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Spine width: 15.0mm
Width: 129.0mm
Height: 198.0mm
Weight: 204g
Pages: 240
About the Author
Jennifer Higgie is an Australian writer who lives in London. Previously the editor of frieze magazine, and the presenter of Bow Down, a podcast about women in art history, she is the author and illustrator of the children’s book There’s Not One; the editor of The Artist’s Joke and the author of The Mirror & The Palette: Rebellion, Revolution & Resistance, 500 Years of Women's Self Portraits, and The Other Side: Women, Art and the Spirit World.
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