num_pages: 208
description: 'All our family was Chelsea, but it wasn't the Chelsea of the posh houses in Turk's Row and Cheyne Walk - you never saw gentry hanging about our turning. And the only artists we knew were the pavement artists down on their knees along the embankment.Sarah Hodge was names after a drunk who came down Keppel Street and sat on the doorstep singing on the night of the child's birth: not a promising start for a girl in 1890s London. But while Sarah's is not a world of culture or cash, it is a world of noise, of colour, of love: a world of toffee-apple men, Italians selling Lemon Ice, Pink Ice and Ice-cream Plain, gypsies and flower girls, rag shops and boozers.Her story is both the story of a bygone London and the story of a girl's passage into womanhood. Through 'ordinary' eyes we see tragedy, courage, love and sacrifice; children who are wanted, children got rid of with boiled currants and gin; men loved, men despised.This is a remarkably powerful tale. beautifully told; a work of great talent and vigour.The book cover illustration is by Barbara Hanrahan.
language: English
title: A Chelsea Girl
titlecomplete: A Chelsea Girl
characters: Sarah Hodge
ratings_count: 6
places: Chelsea, England
publisher: Grafton Books (Collins Publishing London)