Wainewright the Poisoner: The Confessions of Thomas Griffiths Wainewright

Thomas Griffiths Wainewright (1794-1847) lived the first half of his life near the centre of the Romantic revolution, and the second half in exile and disgrace. Wainewright's grandfather and guardian founded the `Monthly Review'; he was educated by Charles Burney, studied art under John Linnell and Thomas Phillips. Wainewright painted a portrait of Byron, and counted Henry Fuseli, William Blake and Charles Lamb amongst his good friends. Wainewright was also an amoral and ingenious criminal. Suspected of three murders, found guilty of forgery, Wainewright was transported for life to Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania). In this book, which Andrew Motion calls `an experimental biography', he recreates Wainewright's life by using a purported confession written by Wainewright in 1847, and drawing on factual information where possible. The result is two stories within the one book. The first, written from Wainewright's perspective, is a memoir in which Wainewright is the victim. Each chapter is followed by a chapter of notes which adds in facts which Wainewright ignores or downplays. Although initially I was distracted by the way in which the notes were presented, I quickly came to appreciate their balancing role in the narrative. Does Mr Motion's experiment work? For me it did because it is possible, largely, to separate the criminal from the artist. Thomas Wainewright, criminal is neither likeable nor trustworthy. Thomas Wainewright, artist, left an entirely different mark on the world. My interest in Wainewright arose from his life in Hobart, Tasmania after 1840. Wainewright was amongst Tasmania's earliest European artists, and his known art consists of mainly small portraits in pencil, watercolour, chalk and Chinese white. Jennifer Cameron-Smith

Andrew Motion has blended two of my favorite genres -- true crime and historical biography -- then wrapped the whole in a carefully crafted and very clever fictional fabric. Surprisingly, "Wainewright the Poisoner" holds up on all levels: as a deft work of literature, an insightful biography and a masterful mystery. I enjoyed the brief, incise chapters of the "Confession" followed by the scholarly footnotes liming the real Wainewright (as available from exisiting sources), the times in which he lived and the extraordinary cast of characters (real) with whom he associated, ranging from Byron and Blake to the inmates of that prison island, Van Dieman's Land (Tasmania). The ease with which Motion moves from the scholarly to flights of fancy (his own as well as the unstable Wainewright's) makes this book one of the most satisfactory, and unusal, reading experiences I've had in quite some time. Very well done, well done indeed.