Behind the Glass

About this book

On the first of May, 1851, the doors of the most astonishing building in the world opened to twenty five thousand people, and Martha Hale was already inside, sitting behind a glass case with a pen in her hand. Martha is twenty nine, the second wife of Edwin Hale, a Clerkenwell instrument maker, and she keeps his books, writes his letters and minds his stand at the Great Exhibition. Inside the glass case lies the thing he is proudest of: a small brass writing frame that lets a blind person write a straight, clear letter. Everyone who stops at the stand asks Edwin about it. Nobody asks Martha anything, although she is the one who dreamed it up, drew it, and taught his blind daughter Lucy to write with it.