The Underground Man ( Signed Copy)

Mick Jackson

ISBN 10: 0330349554 / ISBN 13: 9780330349550

Published by Picador, 1997

About this Item

Red Boards with gold lettering to the spine. Firm binding clean pages. Jacket is not price clipped. Signed by the author on the title page without any dedication. 2nd impression.

Seller Inventory # 1556

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Underground Man ( Signed Copy)
• Publisher: Picador
• Publication Date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0330349554
• ISBN 13: 9780330349550
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Fine
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)

About this title

Synopsis

The eccentric Fifth Duke of Portland built a series of tunnels beneath his home, devised a series of dumb waiters to carry him around the vast house, and gave each of his labourers a donkey and an umbrella. This is a fictional account of his last months.

Review

Mick Jackson makes films. It's no surprise, then, that his first novel, The Underground Man, should be so economically told, the action evoking a mise en scène. The novel takes the form of journal entries interspersed with eyewitness accounts from servants and neighbors. The "Underground Man" portrayed in the novel, William John Cavendish Bentinck-Scott, the Duke of Portland and a resident of Nottinghamshire, England, is mightily eccentric; the man was real (1800-1879), as was his eccentricity. Historical fact: the Duke commissioned eight tunnels on his estate. Present-day fact: if you walk the estate today, you see the skylights--2' in diameter and 4" thick. But why did he build them?

In the last few days of the Duke's life, eccentricity burgeons; madness follows. The reader learns that his odd view of the world was shaped by early tragedy, the full truth of which is withheld until the last few pages.

The Underground Man is that most delectable blend of fact and fiction, one in which the intriguing details of a real life are richly explored through imagination.