The far side of a kiss - Anne Haverty

"He has put me in a book. He has used but a steel nib for his weapon but he has destroyed me as sure as if he used a blade and impaled me upon it."

When William Hazlitt published Liber Amoris, his "book of love," in 1823, scandal rocked the literary world. He had chosen as the object of his grand passion a mere serving maid - thinking her the epitome of innocence and beauty - and she had disappointed him by proving just as tawdry as all the rest. But what of Sarah Walker, the subject of Hazlitt's unfortunate obsession? In a magnificent work of imaginative sympathy, Anne Haverty rescues Sarah from obscurity to let her tell her side of the story. She describes her gradual seduction by the wild man of letters, day by day, hour by hour, as she tries to ward off inappropriate advances without offending him. The story of Sarah Walker's miserable downfall is a simple one, but Anne Haverty sees in it all its richness and complexity.