The Miniaturist
First edition (UK) with quote from S. J. Watson
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| Author | Jessie Burton |
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| Cover artist | Katie Tooke, Andersen M Studio |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Historical fiction |
| Set in | 1686/7 Amsterdam |
| Published | 2014, Ecco (US), Picador (UK) |
| ISBN | |
The Miniaturist is the 2014 debut novel of English actress and author Jessie Burton. An international bestseller, it was the focus of a publishers bidding war at the 2013 London Book Fair. Set in Amsterdam in 1686/7, the novel was inspired by Petronella Oortman's doll's house on display at the Rijksmuseum. It does not otherwise attempt to be a biographical novel.
Petronella (Nella) Oortman, a poor 18-year-old girl from the Dutch countryside, arrives at the Golden Bend home in Amsterdam of the wealthy merchant Johannes Brandt, who married her a month earlier. She steps into a house of secrets held by Brandt's ascetic sister Marin, the servants Cornelia and Otto, and Brandt himself, who treats her more like a friend than a husband. Brandt gives her a wedding present of a dollhouse designed to look like their nine-storey home in miniature, and she engages the services of a local miniaturist to add realistic furnishings to it. The miniaturist, whom she never meets, begins sending her lifelike dolls and furnishings that are eerily accurate and even seem to predict the future. As webs of danger close in on the characters, Nella wonders if the miniaturist holds everyone’s fate in her hands.
Burton, who had studied English literature at the University of Oxford before embarking on an acting career, wrote the novel over a period of four years whilst supporting herself as an actress and PA in the City of London. She came up with the idea while on holiday in Amsterdam, where she viewed Petronella Oortman's doll house at the Rijksmuseum, and undertook extensive research on 17th-century Amsterdam, studying books, cookbooks, Dutch Golden Age paintings, maps, and wills. She trimmed the word count from 120,000 words to 80,000 words after participating in the first Curtis Brown creative writing course in 2011.
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