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Exploring Michèle Roberts’ Imagined Voices in The Walworth Beauty

Abstract The Walworth Beauty (2017) is Michèle Roberts’s haunting new novel, which links historical facts with imaginative fiction. Set in central London, the Anglo-French feminist writer’s novel explores certain Victorian women’s lives, lives which are simultaneously connected with those of twenty-first century men and women. A researcher from the nineteenth century, Joseph Benson, and a retired lecturer and writer from today, Madeleine, develop their stories in different times but in similar locations around a Walworth cul-de-sac and other London sites. Past and present, north and south London link to uncover the enigmatic accounts pictured by the protagonists of this sensuous work of fiction. Inspired by Henry Mayhew’s fourth volume dedicated to the villains, the poor and the prostitutes of the Victorian era, Michèle Roberts narrates the story that emerges from their unrecorded words, putting these women’s voices and personal testimonies on paper. Walking the streets of London will connect Joseph and Madeleine, two flâneurs who are witnessing and feeling the different pathways they encounter. The inner and the outer voices of the protagonists establish a dialogue between the man and the woman that celebrates human connection.