The Quickening Maze

High Beach is a private asylum in Epping Forest, outside London, run by Dr Matthew Allen, who gives his patients unusual freedom. Among them is John Clare, the peasant poet from Northamptonshire, given to delusions and haunted by Mary, a childhood sweetheart, who roams the woods and spends time with the Roma camped nearby. Alfred Tennyson, still grieving for his friend Arthur Hallam, settles close by while his brother Septimus is treated. Allen, short of money and with a history of debt, pins his hopes on a machine for carving decorative woodwork and talks the Tennysons into investing in it, while his lonely teenage daughter Hannah sets her heart on the young poet.

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About the book

Form

Novel

Genres

Historical (assigned by AI)

Set in

United Kingdom, late 1830s

First published

2009

Author's age

35 when first published

ISBN

9780224087469 (Jonathan Cape, United Kingdom)

9780099532446 (Vintage, United Kingdom)

9780143117797 (Penguin Books, United States)

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Wikidata