Nudge, Wink … and Yawn

Period novels populated with actual historical figures have perennially proved a tricky genre to pull off with any great originality, not least when the figures in question are eminent writers whose lives are well-documented public property and the plots little more than variations on familiar biographical themes. The inevitable nudge and wink component in the narrative line—our young heroine Jane fossicking around for a felicitous title for her new manuscript (“I declare, Cassandra, I just cannot decide: shall it be ‘First Impressions’ or ‘Pride and Prejudice’?”) or our aging hero Charles complaining of an ominous dizzy spell just after completing another exhausting day’s work on Edwin Drood—can over the long haul make for ploddingly laboured going. It is perhaps no accident that the most successful contemporary practitioner of the genre, Peter Ackroyd, has extensive experience as a biographer as well as a novelist, an instinctive scholar’s feel for the idiosyncrasies of...