In December 1922 Edith Thompson, a smart, bright, lower-middle class woman who worked in a milliner's shop, was tried for conspiring with her young lover Frederick Bywaters to murder her husband, Percy. The sensational trial, which took place in front of heaving crowds at the Old Bailey, unravelled a real life drama as exciting as any blockbuster: an illicit love affair, a back-street abortion, domestic violence, murder and a double execution. FRED AND EDIE draws together powerful threads between personal memory and public lives, between innocence and responsibility, and between fact and fiction. It is an exploration of a woman caught in the net of her own private fantasy and the conflicts of the era in which she lived, of her muddled attempt to defy convention and reshape her own destiny, and, finally, of the devastation she left in her wake.
Jill Dawson is one of Britain's most talented contemporary writers. She began publishing at the age of 22 by winning first prize in a national short story competition. She went on to win an Eric Gregory Award for poetry, and published her first novel, Trick of the Light, in 1996. She is the author of six novels, editor of six anthologies of poetry and short stories, and has published one poetry pamphlet. Fred & Edie, her third novel, was shortlisted for both the Whitbread and Orange Prize, and was voted one of 50 essential novels by a living author by Guardian readers in the UK.
She has held many fellowships, including the British Council Fellowship in Amherst, and the Creative Writing Fellowship at University of East Anglia, Norwich, where she taught on the Writing MA.
In 2006 she received an honorary doctorate in recognition of her writing and her work with new writers.
Her latest novel, The Great Lover, was selected as a Summer Read for 2009 by TV's Richard and Judy Book Club.
Jill Dawson is currently director of Gold Dust, a mentoring scheme which pairs new writers with big-name established writers. www.gold-dust.org.uk
Her own website is here: www.jilldawson.co.uk
