English Music was published by Hamish Hamilton in 1992. Timothy Harcombe, a boy with psychic healing abilities, is raised by his father, a music-hall mentalist. When Timothy falls into trances, he enters visionary states in which he inhabits the worlds of the great works of English culture: he walks through Dickens’s London, sees through Hogarth’s eyes, hears Byrd’s music, reads alongside De Quincey. The chapters alternate between Timothy’s “real” life and his visionary immersions in English art.
The novel’s argument — that English culture is a single continuous tradition, a “music” that sounds through centuries — was deeply Ackroydian. Each visionary chapter was written in pastiche of the author or artist being visited, demonstrating Ackroyd’s extraordinary range as a prose ventriloquist.
Collecting English Music
First edition (Hamish Hamilton, London, 1992): Boards with dust jacket.
Market values:
- UK first edition, fine in jacket: $25–$60
- US first edition (Knopf): $10–$25
Projected values (2026–2036): Modest appreciation.
The English Tradition
English Music (1992) alternates between the story of a boy growing up in 1920s London with his father (a faith healer and music-hall performer) and a series of dreamlike chapters in which the boy enters the worlds of English cultural touchstones: Dickens, Alice in Wonderland, Sherlock Holmes, Constable’s paintings, Byrd’s music. The novel is Ackroyd’s most explicit statement of his belief in a continuous English imaginative tradition — a “music” that links its greatest artists across centuries.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does Ackroyd mean by “English music”? Not literal music, but the continuous tradition of English imaginative culture — the chain that links Chaucer to Shakespeare to Blake to Dickens to Eliot. Ackroyd believes this tradition has its own internal logic and personality, and that English artists unconsciously draw on and respond to one another across time.