Matthew Francis
AUTHOR

Matthew Francis

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Matthew Francis is a poet, novelist and Professor Emeritus in the Department of English and Creative Writing at Aberystwyth University. He is the author of seven poetry collections, three novels and a collection of short stories. He is also the editor of W.S. Graham's New Collected Poems, and author of a study of Graham, Where the People Are. He lives in West Wales with his wife, Creina.

His third novel, Nocturne with Gaslamps, is published by Neem Tree Press on 5 September 2024. It's a historical crime fiction novel set in Victorian London’s gaslit theatre scene, where ghosts lurk in the shadows and murder takes centre stage.

Nocturne with Gaslamps arose out of his lifelong fascination with night, darkness and sleep. His starting point was the legend of a land of perpetual darkness, mentioned by Homer and by the writers of the Middle Ages. Putting that together with his love of the Victorian novel, particularly Anthony Trollope and Wilkie Collins, he came up with the idea of a story in which the forces of - literal - darkness were pitted against the extraordinary Victorian technology of gaslamps, which introduced light pollution to the modern world. Other elements, the female detectives, the theatre-obsessed young man, the manipulative Count and the prowling ghosts, arose naturally from the theme. The book aims to capture the atmosphere of late nineteenth-century London, the setting for Sherlock Holmes and Jack the Ripper, and to combine suspense and entertainment in the way that the best Victorian novelists do.

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