The Remarkable History of Sir Thomas Upmore

A boy is born so light that he floats — up chimneys, over hedges, out of windows — and the age of science takes an interest, then the age of politics, and Tommy Upmore rises accordingly. Blackmore grew fruit for a living in Teddington, wrote in the evenings and insisted the market garden mattered more; this 1884 satire is the odd one in his shelf, and the joke about how England rewards a man who is full of nothing but air has not aged at all. Fifty-nine plates of northern light and riverside industry, from Munch's Åsgardstrand studio to the Bièvre at the rue Croulebarbe, give the floating boy's rise a fitting backdrop of airy heights and grounded mills.