Now there is Belinda Starling's posthumously published novel, The Journal of Dora Damage. The author sadly died last August at age 34 from complications following what should have been minor surgery. Writing while living in the small Essex village of Wivenhoe, Starling brought well-researched knowledge of mid-19th century London to her book. Her early death has robbed us of a potentially significant new writer.

Her novel's protagonist, Dora Damage, resides in Lambeth, which in the story's late 1850s setting, is a mostly lower middle- and working class district of London with a large share of slums. Her husband Peter, a bookbinder, inherited his business from Dora's father, to whom he had been apprenticed. When Dora became pregnant soon after their marriage, Peter moved the business from Carnaby Street to a location within earshot of the Necropolis Railway line that had its terminus at Waterloo Station. There the couple and daughter live in rented accommodations on imaginary Ivy-street where the walls let in the cold, damp London air to the detriment of Peter's health.

Peter's reasonably successful business begins to fail as his rheumatism increases and his inflamed hands can no longer carry out his craft. As his illness progresses so does his dependence on Laudanum. This forces Dora to secretly run the business with the apprentice Jack, whose gin-guzzling mother has higher hopes for him than following in the family tradition of being a mud-lark, i.e. a scavenger who scours the Thames for all kinds of debris that can be turned into money.

London's powerful bookbinding unions made it illegal for women to be bookbinders. But of course, women were banned from many other occupations in those days, invariably forcing many into the sex trade if they could not find positions as servants, and eventually factory workers as the industrial revolution brought more mechanized jobs. In Dora's case, to survive in her secret profession, she finds that her only source of real income will be as a binder of pornographic material for a syndicate of upper-class pseudo-scientists. While she turns out most elegantly designed, leather bound volumes that hide their real content, she soon realizes that she has been drawn into a very secretive, murky and even dangerous world.

There are many twists and turns in this novel that include the appearance of an educated run-away slave from the United States, insight into the abuses of opium, and an introduction to misguided philanthropic adventures. Starling's richly colored vocabulary manages exceedingly well to capture the sights, sounds, and smells of London at a time when it had turned into Europe's largest city. It also draws a fairly good picture of the disparate lives led by the rich and not so rich. And then, in many ways, it shows us the legally enforced helplessness of women in those days, even the very rich ones, whose inheritance automatically passed into the hands of their husbands because women were their husbands' chattels.

I don't think Starling had any political agenda in mind when she wrote her book, which is far too strongly infused with adventure, and contains some surprise endings (sic) that almost turn the book into a mystery. Yet, The Journal of Dora Damage brings to mind that women's full equality is still unrealized; and the equality achieved is at times blithely given away by some members of what I believe is now called Generation Y-at least in my own experience of this age group. It is a spoiled generation with high expectations, but surprisingly low self-esteem and low commitments, and a generation loath to vote at a time when people are dying for that privilege in other parts of the world. Women are still sold into the sex trade, and children are still abused for pornographic purposes. So, while reading Dora Damage's tale one is in many ways taking an enjoyable literary romp through mid-Victorian London, yet one is unwittingly reminded during this romp that some things do not necessarily change.

Starling started the novel with a Prologue in which Dora tells her readers that the story we are reading is written on the pages of the first book she has ever bound, and of which she is proud "despite its obvious shortcomings." This prologue recalls a story Dora's father told her about St. Bartholomew, the patron saint of books binders (and by the way, also of tanners and leather workers, among many other crafts). It seems the saint presents the souls of soon-to-be-born book binders with a choice of two books. "One is bound in the softest golden calf and majestically gold-tooled, the other is bound plain, undyed goatskin straight from the tan-pits." The soul who chooses the fancy book will find that its story is already unalterably written on its pages. The one who chooses the latter book finds blank pages which can be filled with "inscription by the leading of a life of free will. . . " On the first book , "the hide will be shoddy and the text illegible," at its owner's death. As to the latter book, its outer appearance will improve with age, until it is "finally worthy joining the library of human knowledge," upon its owner's demise.

Dora's prologue concludes with, "For whatever one makes of its curious binding, it conceals the contents of my heart, as clearly as if I had cut it open with a scalpel for the anatomists to read." So, perhaps we, the readers, can take some liberty in interpreting what Starling hoped to achieve with her story aside from it obvious entertainment value.

Starling closed the novel with an Epilogue written by Dora's daughter Lucinda. It begins, "When my mother's publishers requested that I write a preface for the publication of the first edition, I found myself unable so to do. For her past is history, and I cannot preface it. I can only write an afterword. . ." The daughter then proceeds to tell us that Dora had signed the publishing contract shortly before her death.