A Wild and True Relation by Kim Sherwood: George Eliot meets Dickens in a literary treasure hunt

Someone has betrayed Tom West. Following a bloody ambush during the Great Storm of 1703, and a violent, confused confrontation, his lover Grace lies dead and her daughter Molly is aboard the great smuggler’s ship. The child’s name is now Orlando, and she must never learn the truth of her mother’s murder.

So far, so breathlessly swashbuckling. But, 40 pages in, Kim Sherwood’s new novel takes a surprising turn. In the first of several “interleaved” sections, a nameless author shares their notes for an upcoming talk, pegged to the anniversary of Virginia Woolf’s 1928 A Room of One’s Own lectures at Cambridge. A key Woolf quote sets the tone: “For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.”

Did you know, our lecturer queries, that Celia Fiennes wrote her tour of Britain long before Daniel Defoe’s celebrated version? There follows a fictionalised scene in which Defoe and Fiennes discuss their contrasting opportunities, and refer to a legendary Devon smuggler called Tom West – plus a fabled lady’s journal which contains his story.

That’s the start of a riveting treasure hunt, apparently tracing this folklore while actually challenging the male-dominated canon throughout the centuries. It’s a bold comment on the innate unreliability of history, and how frequently women are erased from it – either as subjects or as chroniclers.

The late Hilary Mantel praised Sherwood’s ambition and sophistication, and indeed her work is both full-blooded historical fiction and thoughtful literary deconstruction, both elements immaculately researched. You can take pleasure in her punchy plotting and flamboyant nautical descriptions, plus the subversive Molly’s complex navigation of those dual selves – with “Orlando” a clear nod to Woolf’s similarly gender-bending novel.

But far more provocative are the depictions of women whose talent was suppressed, hidden, or punished by society – such as Joshua Reynolds’s artist sister Frances; writer and Samuel Johnson’s mistress Hester Thrale; or Mary Ann Evans, aka George Eliot, who, in Sherwood’s account, tells Charles Dickens that he doesn’t understand what it is to have “a man’s force of genius in you, and yet to suffer the slavery of being a girl”.

With each digression, though, it becomes harder to return to the more conventional melodrama, which doesn’t quite justify its near-500 pages. But its constant references to freedom do chime with Sherwood’s exciting reclamation of women’s voices. She’s certainly rocked the boat here: next time, I hope she really plunges us into the depths.

A Wild and True Relation is published by Virago at ￡18.99. To order your copy for ￡16.99 call 0844 871 1514 or visit Telegraph Books