A novel inspired by a year in the life of Richard Dadd, a great Victorian painter and inmate of London's Bethlem Hospital – more commonly known as Bedlam.
In 1842 an English artist accompanied a former mayor on a Grand Tour of Europe and the Middle East. Within a year he had become a devotee of the Egyptian god Osiris and murdered his beloved father, believing him to be an impostor. Bedlam is a novel inspired by a year in the life of Richard Dadd, a great Victorian painter and inmate of London's Bethlem Hospital – more commonly known as Bedlam.
« 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. »
Oliver Harris, Times Literary Supplement
Jennifer Higgie is an Australian novelist, screenwriter, art critic and co-editor of Frieze Magazine.
