The Maternal Element

Synopsis

Siberia 1833.

Forty-one-year-old Maria Mendeleeva is enduring her seventeenth pregnancy. Her husband Ivan has lost his sight, and her brother Vasily has left their grandfather’s glass factory in ruins. The factory Maria hungered for as a child. On the brink of poverty and her family’s only remaining hope, Maria must find a way to make the factory viable. She must find the power to bring her grandfather's dreams back to life. She must make the glass sing.

The Maternal Element is a sweeping, gripping epic with an extraordinary woman at its heart. Maria Mendeleeva – mother of Dmitri Mendeleev, who devised the Periodic Table of the Elements – is a heroine like no other. A woman who refuses to be quashed by circumstance, Maria fights against the strictures of her time to gain an education for herself and for her children as she traverses the Urals of Russia seeking opportunity and safety for her family. A vivid and visceral portrait of a woman history has long since forgotten, The Maternal Element is a manifesto for truth, female empowerment and defying societal expectations.

Praise for this Book

‘The Maternal Element is a masterclass in detective research. The result is a history rich in personalities, full of drama, and alive to the smallest details that reveal the greatest truths. In Nicholls’s hands, Maria Mendeleeva is revealed for the first time as a force in her own right – the invisible element in her son Dmitri Mendeleev’s periodic table.’ —Amanda Foreman

‘I was transported to a Russia in better times, when despite the poverty and contrasting opulence of the court there was freethinking, high culture and peasant nobility. Cleverly imagined, beautifully voiced and written.’ —Allan Mallinson

‘I lapped it up over three days. The story of an extraordinary mother of a large family in Russia living before the Revolutions, told with love and flair by another mother of a large family. A wonderfully researched and heart-felt read.’ —Jeremy Irons

‘At the heart of Kate Nicholls’ vivid realisation of 19th-century Russia is a remarkable woman. A born writer with a finely tuned ear for dialogue and a graphic sense of the historical moment, Kate is as comfortable rendering the household of Maria Mendeleeva – the maternal element – as in articulating the crucible of ideas that helped create one of the greatest scientists in history.’ —Alan Samson

‘The great virtue of the book is the mastery of language, and the wonderful prose-poetic imagery, and the vivid picture we gain of everyday life in Russia / Siberia.’ —Richard Dawkins

‘The Maternal Element is a sweeping, gripping epic with an extraordinary woman at its heart. Maria Mendeleeva – mother of Dmitri Mendeleev, who devised the Periodic Table of the Elements – is a heroine like no other. The novel is true to history but has the vivid life of fiction, and we meet a Maria who is passionate, courageous and brilliant, who fights against the strictures of her time to gain an education for herself – and for her children. Her adventures in 19th-century Russia sweep the reader into a wholly immersive world. Simply put: this is a brilliant and entrancing novel. I could not put it down.’ —Erica Wagner