How to Create the Perfect Wife - Tapa dura

The kind of story you couldn't make up: two girls taken from foundling hospitals in the late 18th century to be trained by Thomas Day, Enlightenment man and follower of Rousseau, one for eventual marriage to him. An 'experiment' supported by friend lie Erasmus Darwin masks the horror of almost 15,000 children abandoned in one week. Superb history. (SUNDAY HERALD)

The creepy tale pf am 18th-century gentleman who attempted to mould two prepubescent girls into his dream women. (THE OBSERVER)

[Moore's] book reads at times like a historical novel. Yet it is underpinned by meticulous research, and raises a host of questions about eighteenth-century attitudes toward women, love, and power, both personal and political (Jenny Uglow NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS)

By the measure of our times Day is a damnable oddball, but Moore paints him in an engaging way and rescues the unfortunate Sabrina from the dustbucket of history. (SUNDAY BUSINESS POST)

As in her previous book, Wedlock, which portrayed a disastrous and cruel marriage, Moore has found an excruciatingly gruesome and fascinating story. But instead of turning these portraits into misery biographies, she weaves them into the broader context of the time." (The Guardian)

A sort of double biography of an 18th-century sociopath, Thomas Day, and of the orphans he illegally acquired, to groom one for his future wife. It's a grim tale told with flashes of humour" (SUNDAY TELEGRAPH)

In this enthralling, brilliantly researched book, Wendy Moore has uncovered a story so weird that you have to keep reminding yourself that it actually happened. (Kathryn Hughes MAIL ON SUNDAY)

Moore has again found an excruciatingly gruesome and fascinating story. But instead of turning these portraits into misery biographies, she weaves them into the broader context of the time...In How to Create the Perfect Wife, she investigates education, liberty and the role of women. It is pleasing to see a writer bringing together painstaking research with gripping storytelling. I can't wait for her next book. (Andrew Wulf The Guardian)

Wendy Moore has written before about brutal oddball Georgians, but what is so intriguing about this rollicking and well-researched book is just how confoundedly, detestably hypocritical her central character is...This is a sordid tale, splendidly told. (Helen Davies SUNDAY TIMES)

A true Pygmalion-style story set in Georgian England (Kate Figes MAIL ON SUNDAY - YOU MAGAZINE)