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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This novel owes a debt to the following works: Letters from the Malay Archipelago by Alfred Russel Wallace, ed. John Van Wyhe and Kees Rookmaaker (Oxford University Press), Darwin’s Moon, A biography of Alfred Russel Wallace by Amabel Williams-Ellis (Blackie), Into the Heart of Borneo by Redmond O’Hanlon (The Salamander Press), Almayer’s Folly by Joseph Conrad (Penguin Books), Charles Darwin, Victorian Mythmaker by A. N. Wilson (John Murray), Science and the Practice of Medicine in the Nineteenth Century by W. F. Bynum (Cambridge University Press), The Butchering Art, Joseph Lister’s quest to transform the grisly world of Victorian medicine by Lindsey Fitzharris (Allen Lane), How to be a Victorian by Ruth Goodman (WW Norton), Inside the Victorian Home by Judith Flanders (WW Norton), The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs Beeton by Kathryn Hughes (4^th Estate), Rites of Passage by William Golding (Faber & Faber), Roads to Ruin: The Shocking History of Social Reform by E. S. Turner (Penguin Books), The Plimsoll Sensation: the Great Campaign to Save Lives at Sea by Nicolette Jones (Abacus), A Charming Place: Bath in the Life and Novels of Jane Austen by Maggie Lane (Millstream Books), Tales of the New Babylon: Paris in the mid-19th Century by Rupert Christiansen (Minerva).

My old friend and colleague, Malcolm Bradbury said to me early in my writing life that ‘serious novels are not just written, they are rewritten’ and while I still agree with this, I know that the process of successful rewriting depends hugely on the editorial judgement of an author’s ‘first readers’. Mine were Bill Clegg, Alison Samuel and my beloved partner and dedicatee of this book, Richard Holmes. All three gave generously of their time and their intelligence and enabled me to make the journey from first draft to final MS without excessive psychic pain or too much mourning for my long-lost editor, Penelope Hoare.

A lively email exchange with Neel Mukherjee on the subjects explored in this book kept me amused and sustained. Clara Farmer was astute in putting to me a series of important additional questions and I want to thank her and the marvellously supportive team at Chatto/Vintage: Rosanna Boscawen, Richard Cable, Beth Coates, Rachel Cugnoni, Tom Drake-Lee, Charlotte Humphery, Victoria Murray-Browne, Fran Owen, Stephen Parker, and Mari Yamazaki. I also owe a huge debt of gratitude to my friend and agent, Caroline Michel. She is like a beacon of never-faltering light in her writers’ lives, or perhaps an island of mercy.