Description

Born to rough cloth in working-class London in 1748, Mary Saunders hungers for velvet and lace—a desire that leads her to a life of prostitution, where she encounters a freedom unknown to virtuous young women. In the end, it is clothes, their splendour and their deception, that bring Mary to the brink of disaster. Slammerkin is both a brilliant evocation of another era and a timeless tale of the rage of adolescence.

Genres

About the author(s)

Emma Donoghue is a novelist, screenwriter, and playwright. Room sold almost three million copies, won the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker and Orange Prizes. Donoghue scripted the Canadian-Irish film adaptation, which was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. The Wonder was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and Donoghue co-wrote the 2022 screen adaptation for Netflix. The Pull of the Stars was a finalist for the Trillium Book Award and was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Haven was shortlisted for the 2024 Dublin Literary Award. Donoghue’s fiction ranges from the contemporary (Stir-Fry, Hood, Landing, Touchy Subjects, Akin) to the historical (Learned by Heart, SlammerkinThe Sealed Letter, AstrayFrog Music) and includes two books for young readers, The Lotterys Plus One and The Lotterys More or Less.