LEMPRIERE’S DICTIONARY

Harmony, New York, 1992, 1^st American ed., 2^nd pr.  ISBN 0-517-58184-1.  Hard cover, 422 pages.  Unread copy, no remainder marks; very light edge and cover wear to jacket with a small nick at spine head.  Author’s first novel and Winner of the Somerset Maugham Prize.  ‘… a mesmerizing mix of murder, intrigue, and historical detail. … At the heart of this spellbinding story are three seemingly unrelated historical events: as the seventeenth century opens, a band of venturers forms the Honorable Company of Merchants, trading from England to the East Indies – the East India Company; meanwhile in France, a city is burned and thirty thousand men, women, and children are massacred – the siege of La Rochelle; almost two centuries later, John Lempriere writes his celebrated dictionary of classical mythology – Lempriere’s Dictionary.  This much is fact.  Norfolk’s extraordinary fiction shows how the first two events led inescapably to the third. … this astonishing tale encompasses the Great Voyages of Discovery, multinational financial conspiracies, a centuries-old murderous feud, and central to these, the fevered writing of John Lempriere’s dictionary.’ (from front flap)