Confessions of the Fox

Hardcover, 352 pages

English language

Published Jan. 5, 2018 by One World.

ISBN:
978-0-399-59227-0
Copied ISBN!
OCLC Number:
1004830275

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5 stars (1 review)

Set in the eighteenth century London underworld, this bawdy, genre-bending novel reimagines the life of thief and jailbreaker Jack Sheppard to tell a profound story about gender, love, and liberation.

Recently jilted and increasingly unhinged, Dr. Voth throws himself into his work, obsessively researching the life of Jack Sheppard, a legendary eighteenth century thief. No one knows Jack’s true story—his confessions have never been found. That is, until Dr. Voth discovers a mysterious stack of papers titled Confessions of the Fox.

Dated 1724, the manuscript tells the story of an orphan named P. Sold into servitude at twelve, P struggles for years with her desire to live as “Jack.” When P falls dizzyingly in love with Bess, a sex worker looking for freedom of her own, P begins to imagine a different life. Bess brings P into the London underworld where scamps and rogues clash with London’s newly established police …

6 editions

Review of 'Confessions of the Fox' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

This was an awesome read, Heard about it from a talk hosted by Red May Seattle this year which has a bunch of people offering glowing reviews of this book. One of them said it was like if Marx's Capital Vol. 1 was written today into a story about austerity in the academy and a historical action-thriller or something.

Definitely a fun read, started off hating the footnotes but grew to love them. Took me until the second part to feel invested in the characters but after that I plowed through the book.

If you're looking for a historical drama about underworld queers, trans thief, sex workers, and the struggles against the establishment of the police in victorian England than this is a book for you.

lulz, but seriously a fun concept and amazing references to feminist, marxist, and post-colonial literature throughout. I even appreciated the consistent reveries to the …