[]
The Daylight Gate
Play sample
  • Published: 16 August 2012
  • ISBN: 9781446492321
  • Imprint: Cornerstone Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 240

The Daylight Gate

Formats & editions
EBook
16 Aug 2012
Audiobook
16 Aug 2012
Paperback
15 Dec 2020
Buy from…
Amazon Apple Books Google Play Kobo Booktopia eBooks.com

Based on the Pendle witch trials of 1612, an extraordinary story of magic, superstition, and ruthless murder by Jeanette Winterson, author of Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

'Utterly compulsive' Daily Telegraph
'A gripping gothic read' Sarah Hall, Guardian
'So seductive ... I was hooked' Independent

The Forest of Pendle used to be a hunting ground, but some say that the hill is the hunter - alive in its black-and-green coat cropped like an animal pelt.

Good Friday, 1612. Two notorious witches await trial and certain death in Lancaster Castle, whilst a small group gathers in secret protest. Into this group the self-made Alice Nutter stakes her claim and swears to fight against the rule of fear. But what is Alice's connection to these witches? What is magic if not power, and what will happen to the women who possess it?
  • Published: 16 August 2012
  • ISBN: 9781446492321
  • Imprint: Cornerstone Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 240
Categories:

About the author

Jeanette Winterson

Jeanette Winterson CBE was born in Manchester. Adopted by Pentecostal parents she was raised to be a missionary. This did and didn’t work out. Discovering early the power of books she left home at 16 to live in a Mini and get on with her education. After graduating from Oxford University she worked for a while in the theatre and published her first novel at 25. Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit is based on her own upbringing but using herself as a fictional character. She scripted the novel into a BAFTA-winning BBC drama. 27 years later she re-visited that material in the bestselling memoir Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? She has written 10 novels for adults, as well as children’s books, non-fiction and screenplays. She is Professor of New Writing at the University of Manchester. She lives in the Cotswolds in a wood and in Spitalfields, London. She believes that art is for everyone and it is her mission to prove it.
portrait photo of Jeanette Winterson

Also by Jeanette Winterson

Christmas Days
Night Side of the River
12 Bytes
The Gap of Time
Frankissstein
One Aladdin Two Lamps
The Powerbook
See all

Praise for The Daylight Gate

If you like her other novels, you will adore this. She has done her homework... the beauty of the writing, exemplary in its pared-down simplicity. It’s so seductive that by the middle I was hooked.

Independent

If you like her other novels, you will adore this. She has done her homework... the beauty of the writing, exemplary in its pared-down simplicity. It’s so seductive that by the middle I was hooked.

Independent

Sharp-eyed view of history... Winterson is at her best her when she’s dealing with real horrors.

Observer

It is also one of the lead titles in the launch of Hammer books, and boy have they hit the ground at a most appropriate run. While it doesn't seem to be the typical Jeanette Winterson novel, it does feature religious intolerance and lesbian sex, and neither are new to her oeuvre. Nor is a northern setting, nor a look at the bending of truth and fantasy, and the wish-fulfilment of those wanting more. So this is not just a case of an author following a commission, but it almost seems to be, so brilliantly has Winterson followed the Hammer tradition. Here are black masses, dark spells, heaving bosoms and evil not as some tremendous CGI effect, but starting from something as base as bigotry. Only the fact the characters seem like real people and not stereotypical yokels stops this from creating that lost Hammer classic in the reader's mind.

The Bookbag

Jeanette Winterson has embraced horror in this devastating short novel about the Pendle witch trials ... Winterson's fans and horror aficionados will enjoy this humane and at times shocking story ... The Daylight Gate is an unremitting, elegantly crafted tale written in a spare prose style that will haunt you - at least until you pick it up and read it again.

The Riverside Way

One of the summer’s must-reads…readers can expect a sophisticated, beautifully written novel.

Attitude magazine