Goodreads asked Chris Pearce:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Chris Pearce The idea for A Weaver’s Web came out of a non-fiction book I wrote on an Australian convict: Through the Eyes of Thomas Pamphlett: Convict and Castaway. Pamphlett became a brickmaker at Manchester, UK, before being transported to New South Wales. I had done a lot of research into the city’s living and working conditions in the early 19th century. This is where the Industrial Revolution started and I was fascinated by the way it unfolded, including the poverty and the upheaval of hundreds of thousands of people as they were forced to move from their rural villages to the larger towns and cities to find work in the new factories which were more efficient than the old cottage industries. So I thought I would write a novel about a family, the Wakefields, who battle through all this.

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