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Authors: Anthony Burgess

A Dead Man in Deptford

BOOK: A Dead Man in Deptford
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Praise for Anthony Burgess’s
A Dead Man in Deptford

“It’s a splendidly atmospheric re-creation of the life of
eminent Elizabethan playwright and poet Christopher
Marlowe… . lush, elegant writing … Burgess’s
sense of smelly bodies, religious fanaticism, and death
lurking around every corner is immaculate. A delicious
engagement of the past for every fiction lover.”

-Booklist

“A dishy historical tabloid laced with an intriguing
portrait of Marlowe.”

-Chicago Sun-Times

“A tour de force re-creation of Elizabethan life… .
No reader can fail to be deeply moved.”

-Detroit Free Press

“A brilliant and totally reliable historical novel …
An amazing tour de force.”

-Houston Chronicle

“A daring romp through history, theology, sex,
language, and espionage… . A disarmingly realistic
literary thriller with Marlowe as its hero… . Burgess
has mastered, as perhaps only he could, the arch, quasipoetic diction of the period, along with a welter of
details, from clothes to cuisine… . A fitting final
tribute from one great English writer to the genius of
another.”

-Kirkus Reviews (starred)

“One of this prolific author’s finest books. Burgess
brilliantly evokes the murky world of Elizabethan
politics.”

-Library Journal

“A vivid, mordant portrait … a remarkably quick
read.”

-Miami Herald

“A humdinger … from one of the finest writers of
the last half of this century.”

-Minneapolis Star-Tribune

“A lushly written novel of international intrigue …
This gripping novel contains magnificent re-creations.”

-Newsday

“A lavish display of linguistics and historical erudition
worn lightly. A vivid description of Elizabethan
theatre.”

-Philadelphia Inquirer

“A masterly piece of work [that] reflects the author’s
magical sense of language and his deep immersion in
the Elizabethan ethos… . Burgess’s command of his
material is absolute and he brings a lifetime’s linguistic
and fictional gifts to this headlong, shining, cruel
portrait of a terrifying-but posthumously gloriousage.”

-Publishers Weekly (starred)

“A superb re-creation of the Age of Elizabeth …
giving us a correct view of Marlowe.”

-Richmond Times-Dispatch

“An absorbing and rewarding story about a fascinating
man.”

-St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“Much more than an artful thriller… . It is fitting
and proper that this final novel should be a masterpiece
of its kind-a true triumph.”

-Washington Times

ANTHONY BURGESS was born John Burgess Wilson in 1917 in
Manchester and educated at the University of Manchester, where
he studied music. After fulfilling his National Service in Gibraltar,
he joined the colonial service as an education officer and taught
English literature in Malaya and Borneo. During this period he
wrote the novels that would form The Malayan Trilogy, but it was
not until he returned to England in 1960, having been incorrectly
diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor, that he turned seriously to writing. In what he called his “pseudo-terminal year,” he tried
to provide his prospective widow with future income by writing
four novels, including One Hand Clapping. Over the course of his
literary career, spent in England, Europe, and America, he would
write over fifty books and dozens of musical works, including
operas, choral works and song cycles, as well as innumerable articles for British, American, French and Italian newspapers and
magazines, which were partly collected in One Man’s Chorus. His
best-known novels are A Clockwork Orange, the Booker
Prize-shortlisted Earthly Powers, and the Enderby novels-Inside
Mr. Enderby, Enderby Outside, The Clockwork Testament, or
Enderby’s End, and Enderby’s Dark Lady-all collected in The
Complete Enderby. Although his erudition never received formal
scholarly certification, he was a Visiting Fellow of Princeton
University and a Distinguished Professor of City College, New
York. His lifelong love of Shakespeare found expression in his
novel Nothing Like the Sun, a popular biography, and an unproduced epic screenplay, Will!. He died in 1993 after publishing A
Dead Man in Deptford. His last novel, Byrne, was published a
year after his death.

A DEAD MAN
IN DEPTFORD
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
novels

The Long Day Wanes:

Time for a Tiger

The Enemy in the Blanket

Beds in the East

The Right to an Answer

The Doctor is Sick

The Worm and the Ring

Devil of a State

One Hand Clapping

A Clockwork Orange

The Wanting Seed

Honey for the Bears

Inside Mr. Enderby

Nothing like the Sun: A Story
of Shakespeare’s Love-Life

The Eve of Saint Venus

A Vision of Battlements

Tremor of Intent

Enderby Outside

Napoleon Symphony

The Clockwork Testament; or,
Enderby’s End

Beard’s Roman Women

Abba Abba

Man of Nazareth

1985

Earthly Powers

The End of the World News

Enderby’s Dark Lady

The Kingdom of the Wicked

The Pianoplayers

Any Old Iron

The Devil’s Mode (short stories)

autobiography

Little Wilson and Big God

You’ve Had Your Time

for children

A Long Trip to Teatime

The Land Where the Ice Cream
Grows

theatre

Oberon Old and New

Blooms of Dublin

verse

Moses

non-fiction

English Literature: A Survey for
Students

They Wrote in English
(in Italy only)

Language Made Plain

Here Comes Everybody: An
Introduction to James Joyce for
the Ordinary Reader

The Novel Now: A Student’s

Guide to Contemporary Fiction

Urgent Copy: Literary Studies

Shakespeare

Joysprick: An Introduction to the
Language of James Joyce

New York

Hemingway and His World

On Going to Bed

This Man and Music

Homage to Quert Yuiop

Mozart and the Wolf Gang

A Mouthful of Air

translations

The New Aristocrats

The Olive Trees of Justice

The Man Who Robbed Poor
Boxes

Cyrano de Bergerac

Oedipus the King

editor

A Shorter Finnegans Wake

A DEAD MAN
IN DEPTFORD

Anthony Burgess

To Sam Wanamaker (and family) as a
tribute to his courage in bringing back
from the dead a playhouse that
Marlowe never knew

PART ONE

o U must and will suppose (fair or foul reader,
but where’s the difference?) that I suppose a heap
of happenings that I had no eye to eye knowledge
of or concerning. What though a man supposes is oft (often if
you will) of the right and very substance of his seeing. There
was a philosopher who spoke of the cat that mews to be let out
and then mews to be let in again. In the interim, does it exist?
There is in its all the solipsist tendency which is a simulacrum
of the sustentive power of the Almighty, namely what we hold
in the eye exists, remove the eye or let it be removed therefrom
and there is disintegration total if temporary. But of the time of
the cat’s absence a man may also rightly suppose that it is fully
and corporeally in the world down to its last whisker. And so let
it be with my cat or Kit. I must suppose that what I suppose of
his doings behind the back of my viewings is of the nature of a
stout link in the chain of his being, lost to my seeing, not palpable but of necessity existent. I know little. I was but a small
actor and smaller play-botcher who observed him intermittently
though indeed knew him in a very palpable sense (the Holy Bible
speaks or speaketh of such unlawful knowing), that is to say on
the margent of his life, though time is proving that dim eyes and
dimmer wits confounded the periphery with the centre.

BOOK: A Dead Man in Deptford
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