Buy LewisvilleThe novel Lewisville by Alexandra Tidswell tells the story of Martha’s family, who are separated because of her ambition. It follows their fortunes through the first half of the 1800s, in Warwickshire, London, Tasmania, Melbourne’s goldfields and Wellington, New Zealand. Every family has its secrets, and this one took almost two hundred years to unravel.
The tiny hamlet of Willoughby, Warwickshire is where the story starts.
It’s here that we meet Martha and Ebenezer, and discover how driven Martha was to escape a life doing laundry, mending, and working in the turnip fields.
Martha hankered after a feather mattress, nice dresses and a house named Grimmsville. Eb just wanted the love of his life, Martha, and their three girls. He certainly didn’t enjoy being away from them in the army.
Browse the image gallery to see pictures of Willoughby scenes that appear in the story, and documents related to the Masters and Grimm families. Click on the pictures to read a description of each image.
When Martha left Willoughby to look for work, her three youngest children were packed off to the Rugby Union Workhouse. Mary Ann was lucky enough to get an apprenticeship to a seamstress, but Harriet and Will were inmates for some years.
Records of their time there, and after they left, can be seen in the image gallery.
London was Martha’s first destination in her desperate quest for upward social mobility.
There are no records of what she did at first in London, but at some point she found herself working for George Duppa Esq, the nineteen-year-old son of a Baronet from Kent. There, she met David Lewis. Mary Ann, who had been training to be a seamstress in Rugby after leaving the workhouse, joined her in London.
Duppa was taken with Wakefield’s scheme for colonising New Zealand and it wasn’t long before they were all Wellington-bound on the Oriental. Ebenezer too was leaving England on the Stakesby, bound for Tasmania. While Martha’s mission was to escape poverty, Eb’s was always to be reunited with his wife and children.
Ebenezer sailed to Van Diemen’s Land, as Tasmania was known then, on 15 May 1833. I found many records of his time there and you can see some of them in this image gallery.
There are no records of Will’s time at the boys’ reform school at Point Puer though, because that part of the book is fiction. Will vanished without a trace after leaving the Rugby workhouse. You can however see some images of Point Puer.
We know that Ebenezer headed to the goldfields on the screw steamer from Launceston to Melbourne, but what happened to him after that in real life is a mystery. The part of the novel set in the goldfields is invented, as are Jack Ah Wei and Wen. Will and Harriet’s reunion is also fiction, although I like to think it might all have happened.
Wellington in the early days of British immigration was a sort of shanty-town, where two cultures met head-on. Lewisville sees this through the eyes of the colonisers, most of whom saw the tangata whenua as fascinating and even admirable in so far as they did not get in the way of British expansion.
Most of the settlers were in a state of culture shock that seemed to last a long time, gathering from their letters home. There were no such letters however for Martha and Mary Ann, who couldn’t talk about their past with anyone – even each other.
Lewisville’s cover image was created by Auckland artist Penny Howard. The red thread often seen in Penny’s work represents the Māori world view of carrying the past with us into the future, and remaining connected to our tipuna. It symbolises both a blood line, and a story thread. www.whitespace.co.nz/artists/penny-howard
August 2017
"Lewisville is an easy read, often gripping, packed full of interesting characters. In particular, its descriptions of the Wakefield Brothers’ NZ Company and empathetic Māori involvement in early settlement are excellent, so much so that it could easily be used as a set book at secondary school, encompassing history, social studies, geography, as well as literature. There has been a great deal of research behind the writing of what is a remarkable first novel."
April 2017
"In a colourful novel based on the story of her English ancestors, Alexandra Tidswell unravels a 200-year-old tale of intrigue and deceit."
May 2017
"Tidswell has pieced together the true fragments of her family’s story and woven in plausible fictional motives and actions to present a thoroughly enjoyable read."
April 2017
"This intriguing historical novel – based on a true story – is an absolute cracker ...Alexandra Tidswell has researched her own ancestry carefully and thoroughly, and makes clever use of fiction to round out the missing bits. I urge you to read her wonderful suspense-filled account of these colonial lives (two of whom are buried in the Bolton Street Cemetery)."
February 2017
"Lewisville .. is a wonderful, can’t-put-it-down page-turning read."
January 2017
"I see Lewisville as a coming-of-age book. The family story is integral but it is a really gripping story with real characters and identifiable places. This is a valuable contribution to the backstory of our country. It is well-told, excellently edited and researched and very readable."
11 December 2016
"I see Lewisville as a coming-of-age book. The family story is integral but it is a really gripping story with real characters and identifiable places. This is a valuable contribution to the backstory of our country. It is well-told, excellently edited and researched and very readable.
Alexandra Tidswell's new novel was inspired by some very old secrets.
From impoverished wife of a good-for-nothing charmer in Warwickshire, to respectable settler in Wellington, Lewisville is the story of Martha Grimm, fictionalised by her several-times-great granddaughter, Alexandra Tidswell.
Martha's story already reads like pure fiction, it's so remarkable and so full of secrets and drama. Nelson-based Alexandra has had a long fascination with the story. But, as she tells Lynn Freeman, it wasn't until she started researching her ancestor that she uncovered quite how much Martha had effectively re-invented herself.
24 January 2017
Interview with Ruth Todd on Bookenz. Lewisville interview starts at 13.53.
Click to listen to the interview
17 November 2016
“From the first page I was drawn into 1815 Warwickshire and the story of Martha and her family. Their tale of ambition and loss still resonates today as this debut novel is based on the author's own family history. But this is no dry historical saga; it's a beautifully written story that is peopled with compelling characters whom I couldn't help but feel compassion toward even as they made sometimes unsympathetic choices. We follow family members in Warwickshire and London, through the Australian penal colony and gold rush, and as some emigrate to Wellington, New Zealand. I found the story gripping as I wondered when the carefully crafted lies would begin to unravel. It isn't often I awake in the middle of the night to finish a book, but I just had to know what happened next.”
-Jo Dippie, Owner, Page & Blackmore Booksellers ‘What We Are Reading’, 17 Nov 2016.
Goodreads Reviews: 5 star average rating
