The Meaning of Night

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The Meaning of Night, is the debut novel by author Michael Cox. It is a 600-page crime thriller novel set in Victorian England. It was one of four books picked for the shortlist for the Costa Book Awards prize for the debut novel of 2006.^[1], losing out to Stef Penney's The Tenderness of Wolves, which went on to win the overall award for best novel of 2006.

Beginning on a cold October night in 1854 in a dark passageway, an innocent man is stabbed to death. The protagonist and narrator, Edward Glyver, then takes the reader back, confessing his tale of deceit, love and revenge. Glyver reveals the torment he has suffered by his rival, the poet-criminal Phoebus Rainsford Daunt, and why this book lover and scholar has turned to murder. The story moves between the foggy London streets and the enchanting country manor house where Daunt spent his formative years, a place with which Glyver finds he has a special connection.

The book's purchase by London publishers, John Murray, caused a stir in the publishing world for winning the largest ever British auction for a debut novel; Cox was reportedly paid an advance of £500,000.^[2] The deal was followed closely by industry magazines like The Bookseller.

The novel received primarily favourable reviews^[3], albeit with notable exceptions, for example one review in The Daily Telegraph, which dismissed the book as "substandard, ersatz hokum."^[4].