Little Brown Dog

Disgrifiad Cymraeg / Welsh Description

Y flwyddyn yw 1903 ac mae dwy ffrind flaengar mewn byd gwrywaidd, Lena Hageby ac Eliza Blackwood, yn benderfynol o ddwyn Dr William Bayling i gyfrif oherwydd ei arbrofion barbaraidd ar anifeiliaid. Tybed faint fyddan nhw'n barod i'w fentro? Nofel wedi'i seilio ar ddigwyddiadau gwir o'r cyfnod.

Disgrifiad Saesneg / English Description

It's 1903 and widespread calls for social and gender reform flounder against entrenched misogyny. Navigating this world are best friends Lena Hageby and Eliza Blackwood, two modern young women, determined to bring to justice Dr William Bayling, perpetrator of barbaric experiments conducted in the name of medical research. How much will they risk? Based on true events.

Dosbarthu

Byddwn yn dosbarthu eitemau sydd mewn stoc o fewn 3 diwrnod gwaith, fel arfer drwy Royal Mail Tracked 48. Ar gyfer archebion o flaen llaw, byddwn yn dosbarthu’r eitem o fewn 3 diwrnod gwaith ar ôl ei derbyn gan ein cyflenwr.

Dispatch

In-stock items will be dispatched within 3 business days, usually by Royal Mail Tracked 48. For pre-orders, we’ll dispatch within 3 business days of receiving the item from our supplier.

Bywgraffiad yr Awdur / Author Biography

A scientist, with a PhD in climate chemistry, Paula has spent her career writing, educating, campaigning and fretting about the state of our planet. Little Brown Dog is her first foray into fiction. Paula is Welsh born and bred and now lives in London with her partner and a menagerie of rescue animals.

Adolygiad y Cyhoeddwr / Publisher Review

As Paula Owen explains in an afterword, Little Brown Dog is based on a sequence of events that occurred between 1903 and 1906 in which William Bayliss, an eminent physician and vivisectionist – fictionalised in the novel as Bayling – was accused of breaching the law on vivisection in a cruel and abhorrent demonstration before medical students at University College London. Two women witnessed this, and Bayliss was publicly accused by the barrister Stephen Coleridge, Director of the National Anti-Vivisection Society. Bayliss sued Coleridge for libel, and despite the eyewitness testimony won the case, with Coleridge forced to pay substantial damages. A statue was commissioned, both to commemorate the unfortunate dog and as a protest against vivisection. Erected in a park in Battersea, it immediately became the object of controversy, between the pro-vivisection medical community and their opponents who were largely supported by the local community. The two women who witnessed the vivisection were actually upper-class Swedish feminists, but in the novel they are redrawn as Lena Hageby, an early suffragist who lives off an allowance from her well-to-do father, and Eliza Blackwood, a young woman from the Valleys working in London as a library assistant. The two meet, become friends, and Eliza moves into Lena’s luxurious apartment. Eliza, too, is drawn to the suffrage movement, but the two women also become involved in anti-vivisection protest when Lena learns what is going on at UCL. It is the beginning of a series of adventures in which the women become enmeshed in demonstrations that become increasingly violent. The novel also operates at the personal level in the form of a love triangle between Lena, Eliza, and Jack, a young medical student. Jack sees the two at the demonstration, penetrates their disguise, and is immediately attracted to Eliza. Meanwhile, Lena, it becomes clear, is a repressed lesbian who falls in love with Eliza. Jack courts Eliza who returns his affection. But Jack has a problem. If she finds out he is a medical student she will reject him, so he passes himself off as a Classics student. The ruse is of course eventually discovered and Eliza bitterly rejects him. Meanwhile, demonstrations for the statue become increasingly violent as thugs are drafted in to disrupt them. In one confrontation, Eliza punches one of them in the face and as he falls he hits his head, suffering brain damage which leaves him severely disabled for life. Eliza is put on trial, found guilty, and sentenced to two years in Holloway, the notorious women’s prison. There are some powerful scenes in Little Brown Dog , most notably the account of the vivisection itself, and Eliza’s experience of the brutal conditions in Holloway. The reader will not forget these easily. At times the dialogue can be cheerfully anachronistic. In 1903, a young woman from the Valleys would be unlikely to use the Americanism ‘tad’ (‘took me a tad by surprise’); nor would people be living in ‘squats’; and the eminent physician and vivisectionist – villain of the piece though he is – would definitely not have said ‘Jesus wept’, no matter how frustrated. This doesn’t matter too much, though, because in many respects the novel is a costume drama, with twenty-first century mentalities dressed in Edwardian clothing. It would make the basis for an excellent television serial. Little Brown Dog also has a serious didactic function, keeping before us the horrors of vivisection, a practice which is still prevalent in medical research, as we are reminded by Paula Owen in her afterword. The novel ends with Eliza’s release from prison. Jack and Lena are waiting for her beside Jack’s expensive limousine. How did this impoverished student suddenly become wealthy? Why is he about to marry Lena, knowing she is gay? What happens when the three meet outside the prison? For the answers you will have to read the novel…