The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock
London, 1785. Jonah Hancock, a respectable middle-aged merchant living in mourning for his wife and stillborn son, is woken at his Deptford counting-house by news that one of his ship's captains has sold the entire vessel for what he claims is a real mermaid. Hancock pays the debt with his last savings and finds himself the unlikely owner of a small, dried, and unsettlingly genuine specimen, soon the talk of every coffeehouse and bawdy parlor in town. To squeeze profit from the curiosity he agrees to lend the creature to Mrs. Chappell's high-end brothel in King's Place, and there meets Angelica Neal, the most celebrated courtesan of the season, freshly cut adrift by her aristocratic protector. Imogen Hermes Gowar's debut novel weaves the marriage that follows with a darker fairy tale about a second, living mermaid, evoking eighteenth-century London with the abundance and strangeness of a Hogarth print.
Themes & atmosphere
What you might want to know about The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
In 1785 London, widowed merchant Jonah Hancock learns that his captain has sold his ship and bought the dried body of a mermaid in its place. Putting the small specimen on display in a coffeehouse pulls Hancock into the orbit of the famous courtesan Angelica Neal and the bawd Mrs. Chappell.
The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock was a finalist for the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2018. Imogen Hermes Gowar followed it with The Sea, the Sea.
Yes. The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock is set in 1780s Georgian London. The novel blends historical detail with fantasy elements via the supposed mermaid at the heart of the plot.
The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock was written by Imogen Hermes Gowar, published in 2018 by Cengage Gale.
The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock is 496 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock takes most readers 7 to 11 hours to finish.
The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock is a standalone novel by Imogen Hermes Gowar, not part of a series.
The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.