In this episode, I spoke to the writer, Rebecca Lloyd, about her novel, The Child Cephalina (2019), which is published by Tartarus Press:

Rebecca Lloyd’s superb Gothic novel explores friendship, obsession and the uncanny in teeming mid-Victorian London. At its heart is a tale of human relationships threatened by an unknowable force.’

From the very first, the child Cephalina brought conflict into the otherwise peaceful, if eccentric, household at number 12 Judd Street. Robert’s fascination with her was instant, but he could never decide if this eleven-year-old was innocent and lonely, or clever and manipulative. It worried him. His encounters with her were both enchanting and unnerving. All the while his devotion to her was growing, until in the end, nothing could save him from a fate he would never have believed could be his . . .

Find out more about Rebecca Lloyd’s work at her website: beccalloyd.org

Over the course of the episode we discuss spiritualism in the nineteenth century, Henry Mayhew, who was the inspiration for the novel’s narrator, and consider some of the taboo relationships depicted in the novel.