Zohra Nabi explores the dark depths of London

2 hours ago
8 min read

Firstly, I noticed this book is titled Deep Dark but that it is also a Cassia Thorne Mystery. Are you able to tell us if this is therefore the start of a new series? Yes, this is a new series! I’m working on the next book right now – I don’t want to give too much away, but as in the first book I’ve taken inspiration from a prominent Victorian writer, and there’s a new supernatural threat Cassia will have to deal with.

Why did you choose to set your story in Victorian London. What is it that draws you to that point in the past and to that point in London’s history? I’ve lived in London most of my life, and I’ve always been fascinated by the history of the city. When I was little my parents would sometimes take me with them to where they worked in Middle Temple, a beautiful, old part of the city, and I would look at the sword-clutching effigies of the Knights Templar on their tombs. But the early nineteenth century is particularly interesting, I think firstly because all of the brilliant writers who have taken us around the city, and made its different underworlds and communities come to life. Dickens is the most obvious example of this; he created this map of the city, and a mythology around it, and it was a complete a joy as a writer to try and craft my own version of a Dickensian London. The second reason I’m interested in nineteenth century London is that it’s a time of such change. The explosion of popular literature, the emergence of a new kind of capitalism, the pressures on the city that led to huge problems such as homelessness and child exploitation – there are all of these points of interest that are so rich to mine when telling a story.

Victorian London is a popular story setting. Was it important for you to make yours feel different or do you think it is the characters & events which are tied to them which make different stories set at the same time & place stand out? The way I tried to think about Cassia Thorne’s London is that it’s really a pre-Victorian London; we’re actually four years away from Victoria taking the throne. I wanted it to feel as though there were premonitions of the Victorian era coming – the workhouses are being built, the monopoly of the old East India Company is gone – but we’re not quite there yet. There are events going on which will turn the city into the modern metropolis we know today, and yet the old London, with its fairs and live markets and coffee houses, is still so present. Setting the story for the most part at Bartholomew Fair was an aim to capture that sense of change, of the past and future colliding in such an exciting way. I hoped that would be a way of distinguishing it from other stories with a later Victorian feel. However, I do think that the different stories set in nineteenth century London stand out from each other – I think the reason we read historical fiction isn’t just to be transported to a new world, but to feel a connection with the past, and connect with characters who are trying to navigate their lives in a way we understand.

That being said, with so much known & describes about Victorian London, in historical & fictional terms, did you feel pressure to be historically accurate? Definitely – I was fairly meticulous in how I did my research – I ended up being so interested in what I found out that I’m now doing a PhD on the 19^th century poor laws and the workhouses! Having said that, if I found something interesting that I wanted to include, I would make a decision about whether I could have a tiny sacrifice of historical accuracy in favour of drama. After all, we’re in the realm of historical fantasy – if anyone questions me, I can always say that the presence of an enormous monster changed the events of history!

How did you approach the challenge of making the story relatable to the reader of 2025 and beyond? Are there any particular techniques that help? It was definitely a challenge – the first draft had a lot of period terminology which my editors and I decided to take out, as it would be a barrier for children connecting with the text, and we had to be careful with the balance of historical detail and action. I would say there are two techniques which helped. The first was making sure I had complex, relatable characters, who even if they were moving through an unfamiliar world, their motivations and their fears felt understandable to a child reader. The second was to try and be very sensory in how I described London – I wanted a reader to feel as though they were encountering a rougher, more pungent version of a familiar place, and to make them feel as though they were moving around a real and tangible place.

As a Londoner yourself, doing research on London of the past, what was your favourite or most eye opening find & have you managed to include it? There were so many brilliant discoveries I made, it’s hard to pick a favourite! Finding out that some Victorian writers were paid in rum and cake by their publishers made me laugh. In terms of eye-opening things, two come to mind. The first is the discovery of Caroline Gadberry and Mary Mause, a pair of teenage criminals who were known for being the best people to approach about bribing the City Police! Professor Heather Shore has done a lot of research into Caroline’s life in particular, and I really wanted to put a version of them in the book.

The second is perhaps more harrowing. I discovered when reading David Rosenberg’s Rebel Footprints that throughout the early nineteenth century, Italian children were trafficked to London for the sole purpose of performing on street corners. They were incredibly mistreated by their masters; many died of exposure or malnutrition. And yet a lot of the contemporary testimony about these children is complaints about the noise they were making. I couldn’t help but think about the attitude towards migrants today, and a similar lack of compassion that provides a chilling link to the past.

Deep Dark involves a monster. Whilst many people might not believe in monsters we are very accepting of them in fiction. Why do you think this is? I think monsters give us permission to feel afraid of things we might otherwise have to think more intellectually about. They’re certainly a brilliant way of communicating the idea of evil, and of a powerful force that must nonetheless be fought. But there’s also a historic fascination of supernatural beasts, and a reluctance to let go of our belief in them. The monster in Deep Dark is an amalgam of sea creatures I saw depicted on historical maps; creatures that people genuinely believed in throughout the Enlightenment and the scientific revolution. I think there’s such a delicious horror in the idea that although we think we have a complete understanding of the world, there might still be something terrifying lurking beyond the known world…

When you created the character of Cassia how challenging was it not to give her a modern personality & how did you put yourself into the mindset of a Victorian girl? It’s an interesting question – are personalities the same as they were two-hundred years ago? I think when I read books written and testimonies recorded at the time, I find points of connection with the people depicted, both real and fictional. There are parts of Cassia’s personality – ambition, frustration, love of stories – which are all part of being a human being, and there are things she goes through which everyone experiences growing up. But equally I wanted her to have the mindset of someone of her era – it was important to me that she took parts of her world for granted, and didn’t come into the story questioning every accepted wisdom. The things we find strange and uncomfortable about her world won’t necessarily be strange and uncomfortable to her, immediately.

What gave you the idea to have Cassia living a double life selling ballads by day & being locked up at night? Was the latter to make her safe? So, Cassia is locked up as per the rules of the Fleet: once the door is barred at curfew, no one can go in or out until the next morning (so technically Cassia could stay out, but she would have nowhere to go!). I think I had the idea that this was a girl inhabiting multiple worlds in an incredibly divided society. She sells ballads because she desperately needs money, and has a talent for music that gives her an advantage there. But she’s also a gentleman’s daughter, and wants a certain respect that she can only get from taking her place in that kind of social order. The Fleet is a stark representation of the incongruity of her position – she’s living in a semi-respectable apartment with her father, but at the rock bottom of society. Of course, I’m not the first person to use the Victorian debtors’ prisons this way – I loved Dickens’ depictions of the Marshalsea in Little Dorrit and the King’s Bench in David Copperfield.

Is music something important in your own life or did you have to research ballads so as to get the writing & style of them as accurate as possible? Music is incredibly important in my life, and I loved thinking about the different kinds of music in the story, especially where they had supernatural effect. When I was twelve, I sang in a ballad opera, which I think gave me a bit of a feel for how those kinds of songs could work, with their tunes and rhythms. But that was a long time ago, and I also did a lot of research, not only into ballads themselves, but into ballad-singers, and how they operated in London. Oskar Cox Jensen’s The Ballad Singer in Georgian and Victorian London paints such a brilliant picture of how important balladeers were to the fabric of London society.

Cassia, in this book, is investigating the mystery of missing children. Have you already plotted any of her future mysteries & can you share any hints? I think Cassia’s mysteries will always centre around children – a recurring theme is how children were treated in this era, how much they suffered and with what reason. Other than that I don’t want to spoil anything – only to say that in the next book Cassia goes up against villains even more sinister and more cunning than in Deep Dark.

What is your own favourite story set in Victorian London ~ is it one from the time or is it a more recent story? I think my ultimate favourite is Bleak House – it’s such a brilliant howl of a book, so interesting in its treatment of its characters, so contemptuous of the cruelty noted all around it. In terms of children’s books I love, The Ruby in the Smoke series is an excellent depiction of nineteenth century London, and more recently I adored Laura Noakes’s Cosima Unfortunate series, and Jasbinder Bilan’s Nush and the Stolen Emerald.