Blasts from the Past: Sedition by Katharine Grant (2014)

This is the latest in a series of occasional posts featuring books I read years ago about which I was wildly enthusiastic at the time, wanting to press a copy into as many hands as I could.

I’m much more of a contemporary fiction reader but occasionally I read a historical novel that really hits the spot. Katherine Grant’s bawdy, rollicking Sedition certainly did that.

I’d assumed the novel’s title referred to politics given that it’s set five years after the beginning of the French Revolution but it’s more to do with the subversion of male authority. Five financiers hatch a plan to marry off their daughters by having them display their accomplishments on a new-fangled musical instrument called the piano. They commission a celebrated craftsmen who, disgusted at the arrogance of the men, devises a scheme to ruin their daughters’ reputations but in a delicious act of sedition, the tables are turned by the young women. A hugely enjoyable novel, liberally laced with a ribald, salacious wit underpinned with sufficient sobriety to save it from caricature. I read it well over a decade ago but it’s one that’s stayed with me.

What about you, any blasts from the past you’d like to share?

You can find more posts like this here.