Category:
Historical Fiction,
LiteratureLanguage:
EnglishKeywords:
18th Century Experiment isolation WalesWritten by Alix Nathan
Read by Mark Meadows
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged
Publisher: Random House (Audio)
Date: August 2019
Duration: 10 hours 30 minutes
Herbert Powyss lives in an estate in the Welsh Marches, with enough time and income to pursue a gentleman’s fashionable investigations and experiments in botany. But he longs to make his mark in the field of science–something consequential enough to present to the Royal Society in London. He hits on a radical experiment in isolation: For seven years a subject will inhabit three rooms in the basement of the manor house, fitted out with rugs, books, paintings, and even a chamber organ. Meals will arrive thrice daily via a dumbwaiter. The solitude will be totally unrelieved by any social contact whatsoever; the subject will keep a diary of his daily thoughts and actions. The pay: fifty pounds per annum, for life.
Only one man is desperate to apply for the job: John Warlow, a semi-literate laborer with a wife and six children to provide for. The experiment, a classic Enlightenment exercise gone more than a little mad, will have unforeseen consequences for all included.
Sample narration here: https://www.audiobooks.com/audiobook/the-warlow-experiment/361610