Bedlam by Jennifer Higgie

Bedlam by Jennifer Higgie

Jennifer Higgie presents a year in the life of Rich­ard Dadd, infamous inmate of one of England's most notorious sanitariums, London's Bethlem Hospital, better known as Bedlam.

A young man of great promise, Dadd embarks on a grand tour of Europe and the Middle East with his patron, Sir Thomas Phillips. The two men travel through German forests, Alexan­drian brothels and across the desert to the Nile. By the time they find themselves beneath the unforgiving sun of Syria and Palestine, Dadd's fraught mind has been taxed to the limit with extraordinary images. He becomes stranger and more violent, changes his companion attributes to sunstroke. But in Dadd's imagination he has become a devotee of the god Osiris. Shortly after his return to England in 1843, the god directs him to take a life, and Dadd is set on the road to Bedlam.

At once jarringly acute and alarmingly askew, Dadd's voice is rendered with both empathy and acuity by Higgie. This is a poetic and consid­ered portrait of an artist, as well as an intriguing mystery about how, and why, a mind can go so swiftly and dangerously awry.

The Other Side lit up my brainA radical, fascinating exploration of art and the otherworldly, Higgie is an expert and erudite guide in this brilliant reclamation of female artists. * Katy Hessel, author of The Story of Art Without Men *
Higgie chronicles with an illuminance that welds her readers to the page -- Katie Ebbitt * The Violet Book *
Elegantly expanded my thinking on the eternal mystery of where art comes from. * Sinéad Gleeson *
Higgie's prose is fragmentary yet lucid, and the novel evokes the inextricable beauty and terror of Dadd's sensory journey, while raising some of the philosophical questions it poses about art, language and other minds. Bedlam is a mystery story in which we search for clues as to how an individual might go from precocious talent to parricide. * TLS *

Jennifer Higgie is an Australian writer who lives in London. Her recent books include The Other Side: A Journey into Women, Art and the Spirit World and The Mirror & The Palette: Rebellion, Revolution & Resistance, 500 Years of Women's Self Portraits. She is also the author and illustrator of the children's book There's Not One; the editor of The Artist's Joke; and the host of the podcasts Bow Down: Women in Art History and Artist's Artists.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781836742043
ISBN 10	1836742045
Title	Bedlam
Author	Jennifer Higgie
Series	Verso Fiction
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Verso Books
Year published	2026-07-14
Number of pages	240
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.