Philip Pullman, The Sally Lockhart Mysteries

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Pullman wrote these young adult novels—

The Ruby in the Smoke

(1985),

The Shadow in the North

(1988),

The Tiger in the Well

(1990), and

The Tin Princess

(1994)—before embarking on his great sequence,

His Dark Materials

. Adventure stories based in Victorian London, they evoke the penny dreadfuls of the period while displaying far more artistry and a sophisticated moral vision. Pullman has said that

I wrote each one with a genuine cliché of melodrama right at the heart of it . . . : the priceless jewel with a curse on it—the madman with a weapon that could destroy the world—the situation of being trapped in a cellar with the water rising—the little illiterate servant girl from the slums of London who becomes a princess. (online)

I wrote each one with a genuine cliché of melodrama…

2563 words

Citation: Burke, Richard C. . "The Sally Lockhart Mysteries". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 29 January 2011 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=32153, accessed 29 March 2024.]

32153 The Sally Lockhart Mysteries 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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