ABSTRACT
Peter Ackroyd’s literary output is characterised by a clear interrelationship between fiction and popular historiography. This is best manifested in his unwavering interest in the form of the historical novel. This chapter is devoted to the three novels that creatively reconstruct the Georgian period: Hawksmoor (1985), Chatterton (1987) and The Lambs of London (2004). It is argued that the recurrent themes, characters types and ideas result from Ackroyd’s understanding of the eighteenth century as “the Age of Disguise”. This chapter also demonstrates how Ackroyd’s vision of the eighteenth century corresponds to Enlightenment and contemporary theories of the self.
