Social History Book Club: Zadie Smith, The Fraud

This is the first in a new series of Social History Book Club round-table reviews in which an interdisciplinary panel of historians and scholars of literature discuss important works of historical fiction. The series will consider the impact of historical fiction on the discipline of history, as well as the way novelists’ works interact with historiographical trends in a wide range of subfields and adjacent disciplines. Panellists will also talk about the processes of writing about the past and where the novelists’ craft might offer inspiration for historians, or help historians engage with diverse audiences beyond academia.Footnote1

For the first Social History Book Club, we selected The Fraud (London: Penguin, 2023) by award-winning British author Zadie Smith. The Fraud is set in London in 1873. It dramatises the famous case of the Tichborne Claimant, in which a man named Arthur Orton, a butcher from Wagga Wagga, Australia, claimed to be Sir Roger Tichborne, an English aristocrat supposed drowned in a shipwreck in 1854. Although many people connected with the family expressed their belief in Orton’s claim, including Sir Roger’s mother, Lady Theresa Doughty Tichborne (who died shortly before the trial commenced), Orton lost his bid for the inheritance and was subsequently found guilty of perjury. Convicted to serve 10 years in prison in 1874, he died in poverty in 1898.

The novel is told from the perspective of two main characters, both of whom were real. Scottish widow Mrs Eliza Buckly Touchet (1792–1869) lived with the family of her second cousin, the novelist William Harrison Ainsworth. Ainsworth was the author of Rookwood (1834) and Jack Sheppard (1839) as well as other sensational works of Victorian fiction. Through this relationship, Eliza Touchet’s social circle included key literary figures of the period such as Charles Dickens, William Thackeray and Edward Bulwer-Lytton. In 1843, Dickens gave her one of eight pre-publication copies of A Christmas Carol, which he inscribed to her personally. The book was auctioned at Christies for $290,500 in 2009. Andrew Bogle (circa 1801–1877) was an enslaved man born in Jamaica, where he worked on the Hope estate of the Duke of Buckingham and Chandos. In 1826, aged 25, he was taken into service by a Hampshire Baronet, Sir Edward Tichborne, serving as valet to the Tichborne family in England where he married twice before finally moving to Australia, where he met Arthur Orton. Bogle supported Orton’s claim to be Sir Roger Tichborne and his testimony, including his life story, was widely reported in the national and international press. When Orton was convicted of perjury, Bogle was not charged with any crime.

Our contributors to this Social History Book Club discussion are: Frances Houghton, Lecturer in Modern British History, Open University; Kesewa John, Lecturer in Black British History, Goldsmiths, University of London; Sheena Kalayil, Lecturer in Intercultural Communication at the University of Manchester and award-winning author of the novels The Bureau of Second Chances (Polygon, 2017), The Inheritance (Polygon, 2018) and The Wild Wind (Polygon, 2019); Eloise Moss, Senior Lecturer in Modern British History, University of Manchester, and Reviews Editor, Social History; William Pooley, Senior Lecturer in Modern European History, University of Bristol; Michael Sanders, Professor of Nineteenth Century English Literature, University of Manchester; and Benjamin Thomas White, Senior Lecturer in Global History, University of Glasgow.