Slammerkin By Emma Donoghue

Product Description

Set in London & Monmouth in the late 1700s, this is an extraordinary novel about Mary Saunders, the young daughter of a poor seamstress. Mary hungers greedily for fine clothes & ribbons, as people of her class do for food & warmth. It's a hunger that lures her into prostitution at the age of thirteen. Mary is thrown out by her distraught mother when she gets pregnant & almost dies on the dangerous streets of London. Her saviour is Doll
- a prostitute. Mary roams London freely with Doll, selling her body to all manner of 'cullies', dressed whorishly in colourful, gaudy dresses with a painted red smile. Faced with bad debts & threats upon her life she eventually flees to Monmouth, her mother's hometown, where she attempts to start a new life as a maid in Mrs Jones's house. But Mary soon discovers that she can't escape her past & just how dearly people like her pay for yearnings not fitting to their class in society...