Jason Pearl
A Horse Performer Writes
Memoirs on the Life and Travels of Thomas Hammond, 1748–1775
By George E Boulukos (ed)
University of Virginia Press 303pp £47.95 order from our bookshop
Recently discovered in the vast collection of the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, Thomas Hammond’s memoir is an important find. Most 18th-century memoirs were written by members of the elite, but Hammond was a servant. And he was a literary innovator, adapting the techniques of the early novel to autobiography. This is a funny, affecting, thoroughly absorbing story told by a gifted though unschooled writer with a keen eye for detail and a knack for colourful expression. Hammond lived long ago, yet he comes across as modern. The world he describes is strange and interesting, disturbing at times for its violence and injustice but appealing nevertheless for the humour and pragmatism of the people who inhabited it.
Hammond himself is flawed but likeable, a roguish underdog. Having lost much of his family by the age of six, he sold bread in the streets of Exning, Suffolk, worked as a stableboy and jockey, and stole money for books, heading off to the woods to read novels.
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'Within hours, the news spread. A grimy gang of desperadoes had been captured just in time to stop them setting out on an assassination plot of shocking audacity.'
@katheder on the Cato Street Conspiracy of 1820.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/butchers-knives-treason-and-plot
'It is the ... sketches of the local and the overlooked that lend this book its density and drive, and emphasise Britain’s mostly low-key riches – if only you can be bothered to buy an anorak and seek.'
Jonathan Meades on the beauty of brutalism.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/castles-of-concrete
'Cruickshank’s history reveals an extraordinary eclecticism of architectural styles and buildings, from Dutch Revivalism to Arts and Crafts experimentation, from Georgian terraces to Victorian mansion blocks.'
William Boyd on the architecture of Chelsea.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/where-george-eliot-meets-mick-jagger