The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper
12 hrs. 15 min.
Language
Russian
Author
Rubenhold Hallie
Author
Rubenhold Hallie
Narrator
Katerina Afrikantova
Narrator
Katerina Afrikantova
Description
A book about the women murdered by Jack the Ripper, based on five striking human stories and a grim, captivating portrait of Victorian London.
Polly, Annie, Elizabeth, Catherine, and Mary Jane entered history together, even though they never met. They were born in Fleet Street, Knightsbridge, Wolverhampton, Sweden, and Wales. They wrote ballads, ran coffeehouses, lived on country estates, breathed ink dust from printing presses, and escaped from human traffickers.
They were killed in the same year: 1888. The murderer was never found, but the character created by the press to fill this gap became far more famous than any of these five women.
For more than a century, newspapers unanimously claimed that the Ripper hunted prostitutes. Historian Holly Rubenhold discovered that this wasn’t true and decided to tell the real stories of the women. In her ruthless account, the reader is shown not only the world of Dickens and Queen Victoria, but also poverty, homelessness, and rampant misogyny.
In this deep, moving, documentary, and surprisingly literary history, Rubenhold doesn’t present her heroines as saints; instead, she portrays them as a societal phenomenon and shows the consequences of restricting people’s freedom to choose. And that is something still affecting people’s lives today.
GoodReads Readers’ Choice #1 2019, Sunday Times Bestseller #1, Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction 2019 winner.
The book has been translated into 14 languages. In 2019, Mainstreet Pictures acquired the rights for a film adaptation. The series script will be written by Gwyneth Hughes, author of the recent adaptation of William Thackeray’s novel “Vanity Fair.”
Polly, Annie, Elizabeth, Catherine, and Mary Jane entered history together, even though they never met. They were born in Fleet Street, Knightsbridge, Wolverhampton, Sweden, and Wales. They wrote ballads, ran coffeehouses, lived on country estates, breathed ink dust from printing presses, and escaped from human traffickers.
They were killed in the same year: 1888. The murderer was never found, but the character created by the press to fill this gap became far more famous than any of these five women.
For more than a century, newspapers unanimously claimed that the Ripper hunted prostitutes. Historian Holly Rubenhold discovered that this wasn’t true and decided to tell the real stories of the women. In her ruthless account, the reader is shown not only the world of Dickens and Queen Victoria, but also poverty, homelessness, and rampant misogyny.
In this deep, moving, documentary, and surprisingly literary history, Rubenhold doesn’t present her heroines as saints; instead, she portrays them as a societal phenomenon and shows the consequences of restricting people’s freedom to choose. And that is something still affecting people’s lives today.
GoodReads Readers’ Choice #1 2019, Sunday Times Bestseller #1, Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction 2019 winner.
The book has been translated into 14 languages. In 2019, Mainstreet Pictures acquired the rights for a film adaptation. The series script will be written by Gwyneth Hughes, author of the recent adaptation of William Thackeray’s novel “Vanity Fair.”
