Tracy Chevalier talking about her new novel The Glassmaker at Oxford Literary Festival.

Tracy Chevalier is a big star in the literary firmament, since her novel Girl With A Pearl Earring, was made into a film. 

In the crowded field of historical fiction, her brand of high-end, well-written, sensitive story-telling with a strong feminist element has captured an audience of women who don't want to read about the queens and princesses who populated most of the historical fiction of past generations. They want to read about the lives of typical women, working women: servants, weavers, even perhaps glassblowers. 

     Talking to Ben Lawrence, arts editor of the Daily Telegraph, Chevalier tells us that this latest novel took her five years to write. She had to spend a lot of time in Venice and Burano, study the history of glass-blowing, learn its techniques and even practice making glass beads herself. She tells us it is fiendishly difficult and I can well believe it. At the height of the glass manufacturing industry in Venice, women were not permitted to practice the skill. The authorities would turn a blind eye if women confined themselves to making glass beads, and it is this occupation that the protagonist of her story, Orsola Rosso, takes up when her family falls on hard times.

    In Chevalier's books, the pleasure is provided by the historical settings, keenly observed with an eye for aesthetic effect, and the psychological sensitivity. The diagonal shaft of sunlight crossing a studio, the lap of a gondolier's oar, are romance and excitement enough. She seems to like watery places - both Delft and Venice are of course cities of canals. As Vermeer inspired her earlier work, so Carpaccio inspired this one and she confesses to taking many images from him.

   In one way, Chevalier has departed from her usual custom, by allowing the protagonist of this story to live for five centuries, enabling her to encounter Marietta Barovia, one of the few historical women known to have worked as a glassmaker in Venice; the travelling adventurer, Giacomo Casanova; and Luisa Casati, the outrageous fashion icon of the Belle Époque. So there is an element of magic realism in this plot. 

To buy the book, just walk into Blackwells or order it online:-

https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/9781420514445?src=1389975603&isbn=9781420514445

Or if you want the cheaper paperback version, use this link:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/316004017192?

https://oxfordliteraryfestival.org/literature-events/2025/april-05/the-glassmaker