Last Words

In the last year of her life, before her sudden passing in March 2016, Ellen Seligman edited two novels: Michael Helm’s excellent After James, and my second novel, By Gaslight.

By Gaslight is set in Victorian London, and tells the story of the real-life detective William Pinkerton, some six months after his father’s death, as he seeks to trace a criminal his father never managed to catch. Ellen and I worked together on the editing for thirteen months, from February 2015 to March 2016. Our first serious email exchange explored in detail some of the ideas and elements in the novel, and ways to tease them out—themes of fathers and sons, grief, loss, fate, and the ways our lives are determined by where we come from. Our last exchange on the novel—also by email, changing the Reckitt woman’s name to Charlotte, for clarity—was conducted seven...