The Unspeakable Skipton

The Unspeakable Skipton is a comic novel by the British author Pamela Hansford Johnson, written in 1959.

Johnson first mentioned the idea for the novel in her diary on the last day of 1957. "I wish I could finish my book this year, but have about 2 days' worth to do. Have an idea for another, based on a Corvo-like paranoiac, called 'The Sunken Palace'". In the preface to the novel, Johnson said that anyone familiar with the life of Frederick Rolfe would 'detect' some of her sources. Rolfe was an English writer and eccentric of the late 19th century who also styled himself 'Baron Corvo'. Johnson acknowledged A.J.A. Symons's biography, The Quest for Corvo (1934), as a source for the novel.

Johnson completed the manuscript for the novel in just three weeks. She had decided to change the name to 'Living for Art', before settling on the final title. Johnson's biographer Dierdre David describes the novel as "narrated almost entirely from Skipton's lacerating perspective in a matchless construction of free-indirect-discourse."