Rape of the Rose

by Glyn Hughes

When England's prime minister is assassinated, a revolution erupts across northern England, sending angry Luddite mobs on a rampage and pitting an eccentric general against desperate Yorkshire farmers. 10,000 first printing.

Genres: Fiction

319 pages, Hardcover

First published May 29, 1992

About the author

Glyn Hughes has won national prizes and awards for his poetry collections. His first book, Neighbours, was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and won the Welsh Arts Council Poet’s Prize.

He was awarded the Guardian Fiction Prize as well as the David Higham Prize for his first novel, Where I Used To Play On The Green. He was short-listed for The Whitbread Novel of the Year for The Antique Collector, also for the James Tait Black Prize, and the Portico Prize.

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a sort of follow on from The Hawthorn Goddess as one of the main characters here (Mary) is the daughter of the protagonist of the first novel, Anne Wylde. It is though, a stand alone novel. It’s been on my shelves for about thirty years. I’m in a phase of trying to read books on my shelves that have been there too long, so I can move them on. The background is again the Luddite rebellions, this time in 1812, the year the Prime Minister Spencer Perceval was assassinated. The setting is the mill towns and moors of West Yorkshire.
This is the unpleasant underbelly of the Industrial Revolution with plenty of unrest and machine-breaking, zealous and brutal soldiery, the shadow of the workhouse, Methodism. The protagonist is Mor Greave who is a schoolteacher, Luddite and freethinker. There are two primary female characters. Mor’s wife Phoebe and Mary a prostitute (Anne Wylde’s daughter). The mill owners and overseers are suitably brutal and wicked. All of the characters are flawed. The brutality and abuse directed at the children is difficult to read, but I understand that this just reflects the brutality of the newly built factories and the demands of the new machines.
I think more could have been done to flesh out some of the political arguments of the time. I also had concerns about the way the two main female characters were portrayed: whore vs fundamentalist Christian.
This is a mixed bag, but the historical background is interesting, and Hughes does highlight the tensions that the upheavals of the industrial revolution created.

[Colin · Rating 2 out of 5]

A story of events during the industrial revolution set in an area local to me, in particular the 'Luddites'. I thought that this group were anti progress, and according to this book yes they were in some respects but there also seemed to be an element of looking out for their fellow man, given that these fellow men, women and often children appeared to be dreadfully treated by the mill owners. The male lead in the story, Mor Greave is an ex teacher who now weaves pieces of cloth at his home. He is married with two sons, not particularly happily, and becomes involved with a plot to sabotage machines at the local mill. This doesn't go very well, and he takes to the hills in fear of arrest. At the same time, the younger of his sons also runs away, with a young female companion and the bulk of the story is about their travels around the Yorkshire/Lancashire border area. Mor meets the main female character in the book, Mary, but doesn't realise the connections she has with both Luddites and mill owners, as well as the army who are in the area trying to keep the peace. All the makings of a good story spoiled, I thought, by the emphasis placed on the horrid assaults carried out on young female, and the general nastiness of most of the people in the book. Mor doesn't emerge with much credit either, in fact it is difficult to identify a character with any sort of redeeming feature. The book ends not giving the reader much of a clue as to what will happen next, apart from a continuation of the cruelty and injustice around in these times.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fictionalized history of the Luddite movement during the height of Britain's Industrial Revolution. An excellent response to why people have good reason to distrust technological advancement.