Thirteen Forty-Nine

A Novel of the Black Death, set in a Hampshire village over the winter of 1348/49. 

REVIEWS

Striking in its timeliness, the novel plays out against the backdrop of a rampaging virus, which comes from overseas to race through the country, sparing no one from death and grief. Sound familiar? The Black Plague isn’t even Alys [the heroine]’s biggest problem. The pandemic will pass, but once it does, she’ll still be stuck in her feudal society, in a position of powerlessness, ruled by her absentee husband and the self-serving lord of the manor.

Anstey presents all of this with the expert eye of an historian, and as you can imagine, the story is far from a nostalgic one about days gone by.

Chris Boucher, author of Pivot Move (Wings ePress, 2021)

An evocation of village life in the medieval English countryside, at a critical point in time: the Black Death is on its way…a sorrow and woe upon all. Two hundred years in history after the medieval life portrayed in Ellis Peters’ Cadfael novels, Jane Anstey takes us further on the journey through time

Dr Janice Rossen, author of Women Writing Modern Fiction (Palgrave, 2003)

Jane Anstey’s carefully researched account of medieval life in pandemic in a small Hampshire village paints a vivid picture of the dislocation of life, whether in the monastery or the fields, that the Black Death caused. But above all it shows the indomitable human spirit, the caring and the resilience, brought out by adversity. A tale for our times!

Liz Anslow, MA (Oxon)

Another page-turner from Jane Anstey, this time set in 14th century