Fentum Press

Fentum Press is an independent publishing house, based in London and Italy, committed to producing high quality fiction and non-fiction titles aimed at a wide audience

Fentum Press focuses on ambitious, imaginative and innovative writing. All Fentum Press titles are supported with substantial sales and marketing campaigns in the UK and USA.

 

Don’t You Know There’s A War On? by Janet Todd

ISBN: 978-1909572072 (paperback): 13.7 x 19 cm

Fiction

£9.99 (UK) | $15.95 (US)

2 April 2020

 

“Oh to come from somewhere else, to be going to a place far away. Somewhere where the air was crisp and the talk witty, brittle and allusive. You don’t forgive a person for messing this up. You don’t forgive your country for fooling you either.”

 

Joan is a widow, an outsider in a diminished England, where she lives with her only daughter, Maud, angrily conforming to a culture she feels has left her behind.

 

When Maud is threatened, Joan begins a diary to make sense of her alienated past, before and during the War. Giving rein to a loathing for the society that has thwarted her aspirations, she is merciless, her writing often sublimely funny; but Joan has a secret, never confided, which binds Maud to her. As Joan chronicles her life, her observations reveal psychological dramas, which, once uncovered, lead to a shocking conclusion.

 

Played out against the turbulence of the Second World War and its aftermath, Joan’s story is one of a complex mother-daughter relationship, an evocation of the complicities that poison familial attachments and affect intimacies between women. Its nuanced portrayals of the power plays in unbalanced relationships make for a compelling tale of human and political failings. An adroit satire of disintegrating worlds, the novel enthrals and surprises; it confirms Janet Todd as one of the most original voices in contemporary literature.  

 

Praise for Janet Todd’s writing 

“Todd has a good ear for tone and a deep understanding” Emma Donoghue 

“Frank, wry and unexpectedly heartening” Hilary Mantel

 “Intriguing and entertaining; clever, beguiling” Salley Vickers

 

About Janet Todd

,Janet Todd (Jane Austen’s Sanditon, Radiation Diaries, Aphra Behn: A Secret Life, A Man of Genius), internationally renowned scholar, is the General Editor of The Cambridge Works of Jane Austen, editor of Jane Austen in Context, and author of The Cambridge Introduction to Jane Austen, and a former president of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge. Now a novelist, biographer, and literary critic, she is an Emerita Professor at the University of Aberdeen and an Honorary Fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge. Born in Wales, she grew up in Britain, Bermuda and Ceylon/Sri Lanka and has worked at universities in Ghana, Puerto Rico, India, the US (Douglass College, Rutgers, Florida) Scotland (Glasgow, Aberdeen) and England (Cambridge, UEA). She lives in Cambridge, England and Venice, Italy.

 

 

 

Jane Austen’s Sanditon: With an Essay by Janet Todd

ISBN: 978-1909572218 (full-colour, illustrated hardback): 13.3 x 2.5 x 21 cm

Literary Criticism/Literature/Literary Studies/Fiction/Jane Austen

£9.99 (UK) | $14.95 (US)

October 1, 2019

“I so enjoyed Janet Todd’s beautifully produced book.” Andrew Davies, screenwriter.

Gorgeous, profound, delightful, useful, original, this fully illustrated, informative volume combines Jane Austen’s Sanditon novel and Janet Todd’s ground-breaking essay.

This beautifully illustrated and authoritative book is a timely complement to the upcoming ITV/PBS Masterpiece series by the acclaimed screenwriter Andrew Davies.

 

Sanditon is Jane Austen’s last novel, left unfinished when she died. A comedy, it continues the strain of burlesque and caricature she wrote as a teenager and in private throughout her life. This beautifully illustrated volume combines the full novel and Todd’s ground-breaking essay, where she contextualizes Austen’s life and work, Sanditon’s connection with Northanger Abbey (1818) and the Austen family’s speculation in England and the West Indies. She examines the moral and social problems of capitalism, entrepreneurship, and whether wealth trickles down to benefit the place it is made. In explaining the early nineteenth-century culture of self: the exploitation of hypochondria, health fads, seaside resorts, cures, she contends that Sanditon is an innovative, ebullient study of human beings’ vagaries – rather than using common sense, Sanditon’s characters follow intuition and bodily signs believing that desire can be translated into physical facts and speech can transform fantasy into reality. Todd shows Austen’s themes to be akin to contemporary concerns: the mistakes of the self-deluded reveal the inevitable, ridiculous gap between how we think of ourselves and how we appear and sound to others.

 About Janet Todd

Janet Todd (Radiation Diaries, Aphra Behn: A Secret Life, A Man of Genius) is a leading scholar and editor of Jane Austen’s work. The General Editor of The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Jane Austen, editor of Jane Austen in Context, and author of The Cambridge Introduction to Jane Austen, she is a former president of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, a novelist, biographer, and literary critic, she is an Emerita Professor at the University of Aberdeen and an Honorary Fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge. Born in Wales, she grew up in Britain, Bermuda and Ceylon/Sri Lanka and has worked at universities in Ghana, Puerto Rico, India, the US (Douglass College, Rutgers, University of Florida), Scotland (Glasgow, Aberdeen) and England (Cambridge, UEA). She is completing her third novel, Don’t You Know There’s a War On? (2020) and lives in Cambridge and Venice.

Praise for Janet Todd’s work on Jane Austen

 Monumental, powerful, learned… sets the standard” Frank Kermode, London Review of Books

“Essential for anyone with a serious interest in Austen … rendered with razor-sharp clarity for a modern audience – exceptionally useful” Duncan Wu, Raymond Wagner Professor in Literary Studies, Georgetown University, Notes & Queries

 “Intelligent and accessible” Times Literary Supplement

“Easy to read and engaging, excellent on Austen’s work.” Choice

“Todd has a good ear for tone and a deep understanding” Emma Donoghue

“”Janet Todd is one of the foremost feminist literary historians writing now” Lisa Jardine, Centenary Professor of Renaissance Studies, Director of the Centre for Editing Lives and Letters, University of London, Independent on Sunday

 

Blood

Maggie Gee

ISBN: 978-1-909572-12-6 (paperback): 127 x 198 mm

Fiction Literary/Women/Crime/Humorous

£9.99 (UK) | $15.95 (US)

February 7 2019

‘An astonishing book. Funny and fierce, written with style and dash, without fear.’ – Hilary Mantel

‘A marvel, nothing less. Blood, so wonderfully, startlingly unlike any novel I ve ever read that I m a bit stunned into unaccustomed wordlessness. Such a voice, such a memorable creation. Monica is one of the great characters of fiction. An extraordinary feat.’ – Lyndall Gordon

Who attacked Dad?  When corrupt, brutal dentist Albert Ludd is found battered and bloody after failing to attend a memorial party for his son, a soldier killed in Afghanistan, suspicion falls on his other children – especially  37-year-old buxom bruiser Monica, who was heard “uttering threats” against her absent father. How come her car was found outside his house? Why did she buy a large axe? Yet Monica’s a senior teacher…
Blood is a Gothic black comedy seen through the eyes of six-foot Monica, who speaks her secret thoughts aloud and who has been banned from social media by the principal of her school: “Governors queried your use of ‘moron’ and ‘twat’.”

Set in anarchic modern times where terrorism has become routine, Blood also asks serious questions about contemporary life: what can we do with the monstrous men who bully women and the weak? Can we wait for a world of order and justice? If we hit back, can the circle of violence ever be broken?  

Maggie Gee has written 15 books to great acclaim, and her work has been translated into 14 languages. One of Granta’s original ‘Best of Young British Novelists’, she has been shortlisted for global prizes including the Orange (now Women’s) Prize, and the Dublin International IMPAC Prize. She is a Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University, a Director of the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society and a Vice-President of the Royal Society of Literature.

Praise for Maggie Gee’s writing:

‘I love the work of Maggie Gee: wickedly smart, funny and fearless, genuinely surprising. Read her.’ Patrick Ness

‘Gripping, original, highly entertaining – {The Flood shows} Maggie Gee at her superb best.’ J. G. Ballard  

‘Up there with Orwell and Huxley.’ Jeremy Paxman, BBC

‘Maggie Gee is superb.  Elegant, humorous, surprising.’ The Times   

Blood

Maggie Gee

ISBN: 978-1-909572-12-6 (paperback): 127 x 198 mm

Fiction Literary/Women/Crime/Humorous

£9.99 (UK) | $15.95 (US)

February 7 2019

‘An astonishing book. Funny and fierce, written with style and dash, without fear.’ – Hilary Mantel

‘A marvel, nothing less. Blood, so wonderfully, startlingly unlike any novel I ve ever read that I m a bit stunned into unaccustomed wordlessness. Such a voice, such a memorable creation. Monica is one of the great characters of fiction. An extraordinary feat.’ – Lyndall Gordon

Who attacked Dad?  When corrupt, brutal dentist Albert Ludd is found battered and bloody after failing to attend a memorial party for his son, a soldier killed in Afghanistan, suspicion falls on his other children – especially  37-year-old buxom bruiser Monica, who was heard “uttering threats” against her absent father. How come her car was found outside his house? Why did she buy a large axe? Yet Monica’s a senior teacher…
Blood is a Gothic black comedy seen through the eyes of six-foot Monica, who speaks her secret thoughts aloud and who has been banned from social media by the principal of her school: “Governors queried your use of ‘moron’ and ‘twat’.”

Set in anarchic modern times where terrorism has become routine, Blood also asks serious questions about contemporary life: what can we do with the monstrous men who bully women and the weak? Can we wait for a world of order and justice? If we hit back, can the circle of violence ever be broken?  

Maggie Gee has written 15 books to great acclaim, and her work has been translated into 14 languages. One of Granta’s original ‘Best of Young British Novelists’, she has been shortlisted for global prizes including the Orange (now Women’s) Prize, and the Dublin International IMPAC Prize. She is a Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University, a Director of the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society and a Vice-President of the Royal Society of Literature.

Praise for Maggie Gee’s writing:

‘I love the work of Maggie Gee: wickedly smart, funny and fearless, genuinely surprising. Read her.’ Patrick Ness

‘Gripping, original, highly entertaining – {The Flood shows} Maggie Gee at her superb best.’ J. G. Ballard  

‘Up there with Orwell and Huxley.’ Jeremy Paxman, BBC

‘Maggie Gee is superb.  Elegant, humorous, surprising.’ The Times   

Radiation Diaries: Cancer, Memory and Fragments of a Life in Words

Janet Todd

ISBN: 9781909572171 (paperback): 191 x 137 mm

£8.99 (UK) | $14.95 (US)

July 9 2018

Janet Todd’s pain-filled interweaving of life and literature is a good book written against the odds – it is frank, wry and unexpectedly heartening.” Hilary Mantel
“I read it avidly, unable to stop. I love the voice, especially the tension between restraint and candour in its brevities― and yet endearingly warm and honest. It’s an original voice and utterly convincing in its blend of confession, quirkiness, humour, intimacy. It’s nothing short of a literary masterpiece, inventing a genre. A delight too is the embeddedness of books in the character of a lifelong reader; it is fascinating to learn of Todd’s fascinating variegated past. How gallant (like the verbal gallop against mortality at the close of The Waves).” Lyndall Gordon, author of Virginia Woolf: A Writer’s Life; Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and her Family’s Feuds and Outsiders: Five Women Who Changed the World
“Janet Todd turns her renowned literary intelligence to her experience as a cancer patient. Original, forceful and often funny; there is no other cancer diary like it. The book’s clear-eyed detail is a reminder that indignity, pain and fear do not diminish memory, imagination or the self.” Terri Apter, psychologist and author of Passing Judgment: Praise and Blame in Everyday Life

Radiation Diaries tells of a month of radiotherapy treatment undergone when Janet Todd was President of a Cambridge college and while her father, in his 100th year, was approaching death, with skin cancer. The day-by-day treatment brought into her mind flashes from her early life in Wales, Bermuda and Ceylon, in Ghana and Puerto Rico, as a young woman, along with stored poems from childhood. Written each morning and night, it tells of the terror she induced in herself with insomniac nights on the web, searching out percentages of recoveries and death, of alternative treatments. Her reactions will be common to others who spend time in hospital-land. Todd’s experiences and writings will inspire and help others with these illness and treatments, and those who care for them.

Unflinching in detail, Radiation Diaries will strike chords for anyone who has suffered a life-threatening illness, but the book’s message is positive, for the author lives well and has a new career.

Now 75, she completed her term as President, retired from academic life and became a novelist, travelling to launch her fiction in US and the UK, while still recovering. She continues her peripatetic existence, albeit more by creative work from her imagination and via computer than by frequent exotic travels to the places she has lived and taught. .

Amnesia Nights 

 

Quinton Skinner

John Wright’s mind is playing tricks on him. He sees people he thinks he knows, but they are only strangers. His memory flickers in and out of focus. What he does know is this: he has not seen his fiancée, Iris, in over three years. He fled their Los Angeles apartment one night after a fit of rage that may or may not have left her dead. He has been living off a small fortune he stole from Iris’s rich, manipulative businessman father. He bides his time and waits for the police to find him and charge him with his lover’s murder. Has he killed her? Is she really dead?

One bright day Iris returns. Is she real, or just a cruel figment of his addled brain? Only a journey into the deepest corners of his past will reveal the truth about John and Iris–about life and death and love, and secrets too dark to reveal.

Our Authors

Maggie Gee

Maggie Gee has written fifteen books to great acclaim and her work has been translated into fourteen languages. One of Granta’s original “Best Young British Novelists”, she has been shortlisted for major prizes, including the Orange (now Women’s) Prize, the IMAPC, and has been a Booker Prize judge.

 

The first female Chair of the Royal Society of Literature, she is now one of its Vice Presidents. She works as a Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University, writes novels and journalism and is a Director of the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society. The Queen awarded her an OBE for Services to Literature in 2012.

 

Maggie Gee lives in London and Ramsgate, Kent.

 

 

 

Quinton Skinner

Quinton Skinner is the author of the novels Amnesia Nights, 14 Degrees Below Zero, and Odd One Out, as well as non-fiction books on fatherhood and rock’n’roll.

A former critic and magazine editor in Los Angeles and Cambridge (Mass.), he has written for publications including the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Huffington Post, Metro, Variety, Glamour and Literary Hub.

He now he works as a journalist and communications specialist based in Minneapolis, USA.

 

Janet Todd

Janet Todd, novelist (A Man of Genius, 2016) and internationally renowned scholar, was President of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, and a Professor of English Literature at the universities of Aberdeen, Glasgow and UEA. Born in Wales, she grew up in Britain, Ceylon and Bermuda and has worked at universities in Ghana, Puerto Rico, India and the US (Douglass College, Rutgers, NJ and the University of Florida).

An expert on women’s writing and feminism and co-founder of the journal, Women’s Writing, she has published biographies and critical work on many authors, including Jane Austen, the Shelley Circle, Mary Wollstonecraft her daughters, and Aphra Behn (Aphra Behn: A Secret Life, Fentum Press, 2017). She was awarded and OBE for services to higher education and literary scholarship in 2013.

Now an Honorary Fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge and Professor Emerita at the University of Aberdeen, she lives in Cambridge and Venice, and is completing her third novel, Don’t You Know There’s a War On? (2019).

Forthcoming Titles

14 Degrees Below Zero – A novel by Quinton Skinner

Jane Austen’s Sanditon – with an essay by Janet Todd

Don’t You Know There’s A War On? – A novel by Janet Todd

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