Mad Richard

A riveting story of talent and the price it exacts, set in a richly imagined Victorian England

Called the most promising artist of his generation, handsome, modest and affectionate, Richard Dadd rubbed shoulders with the great luminaries of the Victorian Age. He grew up along the Medway with Charles Dickens and studied at the Royal Academy Schools under the brilliant and eccentric J.M.W. Turner.

Based on Dadd's tragic true story, Mad Richard follows the young artist as he develops his craft, contemplates the nature of art and fame ? as he watches Dickens navigate those tricky waters ? and ultimately finds himself imprisoned in Bedlam, committed as criminally insane.

In 1853, Charlotte Brontë ? about to publish her third novel, suffering from unrequited love and herself wrestling with questions about art and artists, class, obsession, love, and murder ? visits Richard at Bedlam and finds an unexpected kinship in his feverish mind and his haunting work.

Masterfully slipping through time and memory, Mad Richard maps the artistic temperaments of Charlotte and Richard, weaving their divergent lives together with their shared fears and follies, dreams and crushing illusions.

About the Author

Lesley Krueger is a novelist and screenwriter. Richard Dadd's first cousin-in-law five times removed (if she has the genealogy right), Lesley drew on family information unknown to biographers in writing Mad Richard. The author of six books, she lives with her husband in Toronto where she's an avid member of a women's hockey league and a writer-mentor at the Canadian Film Centre.