The Fly on the Wheel

"The Fly on the Wheel was an instant bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic when it was first published in 1908. Katherine Cecil Thurston was already a popular and successful writer of short stories, political thrillers and novels at this point in her career and had been propelled to literary fame and fortune in 1904 with her wildly successful book John Chilcote, MP . This early success earned her an avid following and allowed her to experiment with more radical subject matters and characters in subsequent books, including gambling, suicide, adultery and a cross-dressing female heroine. She was ahead of her time in so many ways. I had an old Virago edition of The Fly on the Wheel at home. A green Virago spine having been the ultimate arbiter of an underappreciated classic in our household. But it was only after setting up Manderley Press that I began to look afresh at some of the books I’d carted around without actually ever reading. In particular, I’m drawn to stories set in places I’ve travelled to or spent time in, and was aware of the village of Ardmore in Ireland because my mother-in-law grew up there. Cecil Thurston was originally from Cork, but had a summer house in Ardmore where she wrote sections of The Fly on the Wheel . I was hooked after discovering this and started to examine more closely the places featured in the book, as well as its main setting – the Irish city of Waterford. It just so happened that at the same time my sister lived in the flat below an author who was also from Waterford, Megan Nolan. There were some tantalising parallels between both writers, and a new project fell effortlessly into place: Megan’s searing debut novel – Acts of Desperation – was the ideal contemporary connection I was looking for. She was perfectly placed to write a new introduction to Cecil Thurston’s book, and to re-examine tragic young love through a twenty-first century lens, with equally devastating doses of passion and drama. And all linked by the setting of Waterford. Which, if you have not yet had the pleasure of visiting, I would wholeheartedly recommend. To find two authors, separated by over a century but linked through setting, and age, and talent, is quite simply, irresistible. These connections don’t feel laboured; rather the opposite – to identify a universally appealing genre (in this case, the tragic love story) and to be able to highlight themes from a book over a hundred years after publication to a modern classic like Acts of Desperation feels more like literary serendipity. This is just one of the many reasons it deserves a re-read in 2025. And also, back at the start of this particular publishing journey, I was keen for a new edition that would attract new readers. I deliberately wanted to shed any fusty cover design or old-fashioned imagery, and so commissioning another contemporary Waterfordonian to help bring this classic back to life – the extremely talented Irish illustrator Kathi Burke. She designed the front cover of the book, referencing the purple of the original 1908 edition, and on the endpapers, the watchful, judging eyes of society depicted as the cobblestones of Lady Lane where the book is set. “Each of these ‘forgotten’ classics are wonderfully written and have stood the test of time and place” Together, Megan and Kathi—who it turns out were both at school together—have reinvigorated an Irish classic that had been almost entirely forgotten, and just in time to coincide with renewed interest in the author’s life, which was almost as unbelievably dramatic as this novel of hers. The Fly on the Wheel is as thrilling, dramatic and sensationalist now as it was back at the turn of the nineteenth century. And, spoiler alert, it has become one of Cecil Thurston’s best-known works, perhaps because of the uncanny similarities between the demise of Isabel, its protagonist, and the author’s own untimely death just a few years following its publication, aged just 36. We republish new editions of books that for one reason or another have disappeared from shelves. I like to think of it as seeking out and rediscovering literary treasures, most of which are out of print, and some of which have been forgotten about altogether. There is a theme which unites all the texts on our list: each one was deeply inspired by a building, a place or a landmark. For most of my life I’ve been fascinated by the links between location and history, and also the connections between text and images, and have always found that the most powerful way to reach back in time and experience the past is by visiting historical sites, and reading novels set in and inspired by specific places and events. If you can combine these scenarios – reading an old forgotten classic in the old house it was written or set in – that’s practically time travel in my book. Manderley Press is the direct result of my interest in all of the above: I find titles that have been created in and inspired by houses or cities, or any place that has been meaningful to an author, even if it’s imaginary—for example, The Armourer’s House by Rosemary Sutcliff, which is set on the banks of the River Thames in Tudor times —and give them a new introduction and a new cover by contemporary writers and artists with links to the places at the heart of each book. As a publisher, this approach affords me the freedom to republish a wide range of books – literary novels, memoirs, diaries, letters, children’s books or travel guides – and to pull a natural thread between each one."