The Quincunx

The Quincunx

Hardcover edition
Author	Charles Palliser
Illustrator	Jenny Phillips
Cover artist	Benjamin Haydon (first edition), Volker Strater (UK Paperback)
Country	England
Language	English
Genre	Historical fiction
Publisher	Canongate Publishing
Publication date	1989
Media type	Print (Hardcover and Paperback)
Pages	1221 pp.
ISBN
OCLC	23069665

The Quincunx (The Inheritance of John Huffam) is the epic first novel of Charles Palliser. It takes the form of a Dickensian mystery set in early 19th century England, but Palliser has added the modern attributes of an ambiguous ending and unreliable narrators. Many of the puzzles that are apparently solved in the story have an alternative solution in the subtext.

The novel begins in London with a secret meeting between two legal men. A bribe reveals the confidential details of a correspondent who is the link to a vital hidden document. Meanwhile, young John Mellamphy is growing up in the remote countryside with his mother Mary, ignorant of the name of Huffam. Gradually it becomes clear that they are threatened by the search for the document.

The Quincunx was a surprise bestseller. It is notable for its portrayal of 19th century England, covering the breadth of society from the gentry to the poor and from provincial villages to metropolitan London, and its dealing with the eccentricities of English land law. In a review citing parallels with Great Expectations, Little Dorrit, Our Mutual Friend, Martin Chuzzlewit, The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby, Michael Malone has written that "Mr. Palliser appears to have set out not merely to write a Dickens novel but to write all Dickens novels". But Palliser looked beyond Dickens for his depiction of the social conditions, drawing on Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor.

J. Hillis Miller points out that "The conventions ... of Dickens’ novels, are made salient through parody and exaggeration, just as a postmodern building makes the fragility and artifice of those old styles evident..." But Palliser differs from Dickens in that there are "no benevolent father figure, no guiding Providence, almost no good people, no guarantee that justice will eventually be done, nothing, for the most part, but uncertainty and prolonged suffering. It is as though Palliser were saying: 'Let me show you what things were really like at that time'."