Spectre of Lanmere Abbey

I recently obtained a copy of Sarah Wilkinson's 1820 novel The Spectre of Lanmere Abbey; or, The Mystery of the Blue and White Bag; A Romance which Zittaw Press plans to publish. I first read the novel as I sat in the Rare Books reading room in the British Library several years ago. There was something amazing turning the yellowed paper and soaking in the simple, almost autobiographical nature of the novel. I only had two days to read it and take copious notes before returning to Norwich, but those hours are literally etched upon my memory. Why? It's not that the narrative is innovative, the prose magical, it is more, it was actually alive for me, the scenes that Wilkinson describes, the dirty streets of London, the lush Welsh countryside, the small school room. I had just finished researching Wilkinson's life. I had literally troved the archives and streets of London looking for clues to her mysterious life. I traced where she lived, where she was born and of course where she died. I was shocked to discover that every phyisical location of Wilkinson's life was gone, destroyed by war or progress. Wilkinson lived most of her life in Westminster London, down the street from the archives I searched was her circulating library, now a Victorian building. Several of the boarding houses she lived in are not large blocks of flats, the church where she was buried, destroyed in the war, the workhouse she died in, gone. All physical reminders of her life were gone, except the book that I held in my hands those two days, her legacy, if you could call it that, rested in unread, unresearched books. In the Rare Books room I remember making a vow, probably under my breath, that I would make sure she was remembered, that atleast her books, nearly 200 years after her death would live on. Cheesy as it may be, I will keep that vow. Zittaw Press will publish Lanmere Abbey and other novels as we have done with just a few of her chapbooks. She does need to be remembered, if not for her literary skills, for the hard work of being a female novelist and living by the pen.