Allusions/references To Real People and Events
As in Powers's later novel, The Stress of Her Regard, The Anubis Gates features a number of the Romantic Poets as characters. In addition to Coleridge, there is Byron (alongside the fictional 19th century poet William Ashbless created by Powers and James Blaylock). Other real people characterized in the novel are the famous publisher John Murray and the physician who treated Byron for a fever while he traveled in Greece was named Dr. Romanelli.
The novel intertwines a number of real events into the story such as the massacre of the Mamluk beys by Muhammad Ali in 1811 and the failed rebellion by James, Duke of Monmouth against James II in the 1680s.
Powers was apparently heavily influenced in style, descriptions and character types by Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor, and also by the works of Charles Dickens to a lesser degree.
The ship, Blaylock, that Doyle claims he came to England on is named after friend James P. Blaylock.
A minor factual glitch has characters in the story using gold sovereigns (£1 gold coins) in 1810, six years before the coin was authorized by the British Coinage Act of 1816, and seven years before being struck for circulation. The gold coin in use before the sovereign of 20 shillings was the guinea of 21 shillings. Regency/detective novelist Georgette Heyer used the change that came in with the "New Coinage" as a plot twist in her 1954 novel The Toll-Gate.
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