Erastus Galer's Cabinet of Wonders

‘COME IN! COME IN! Don’t dawdle child. There’s nothing to be frightened of in here. A stuffed pirate isn’t going to hurt you – he’s quite dead. I have the world’s finest collection of dead pirates and most of them are perfectly harmless.’

And so Erastus Galer invites you to step inside his Cabinet of Wonders. Will you choose to examine the collection of deadly blowpipes, the bottles of famous old smells, or the human ears from Peru? Perhaps you would rather peek inside the drawers? That one? Ah, Wonder 207 it is then. What is it?

‘What do you mean you don’t know? Children today are such pudding heads! Let me see. Oh, it’s a pea. I don’t remember collecting legumes – vegetables shaped like the Queens of England – but never legumes. How boring! A small hard grey pea. Hah! Wait a minute, of course, it’s The Pea. How could I forget!’

It is the most famous pea in all the world, the pea Hans Christian Andersen wrote about in The Princess and The Pea. But how on earth did Erastus Galer get his hands on it? Well, it all began with a terrifying journey across Europe in the summer of 1840, and the pie that poisoned the Nizam of Mangoo...

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If you are a publisher or a literary agent and would like to find out more about my plans for Erastus Galer and his Cabinet of Wonders, please click on the feedback icon to contact Christopher Hadley.

Christopher Hadley is a writer and historian who has written about buried treasure, anatomical specimens, pints of blood, upside-down stamps, ancient pigments and other things you might find in Erastus Galer’s Cabinet of Wonders. His work has appeared in The Independent, The Guardian, The Times, Esquire, London Review of Books and many other national magazines and newspapers. He lives in Hertfordshire with his wife and three children.

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