‘Desire and the search for freedom in Victorian England’: The New Life by Tom Crewe @TomCrewe1

‘Truths needn’t depend on facts for their expression.’

The quote is from Tom Crewe’s author notes for his novel The New Life. It’s a book I think will be noticed for its unselfconscious depiction of sex between men, but I also admire it as an example of how history can be melded into create great fiction without disrespecting the documented facts. Crewe’s main characters, John Addington and Henry Ellis, play the parts of the real Addington Symonds and Havelock Ellis, authors of the first ...