Matthew Cannonbridge was the most influential mind of the 19th century - a novelist, playwright, the poet of his generation. The problem is, he should never have existed, and only 21st-century don Toby Judd realises that something is wrong with history. Cannonbridge was everywhere: he discussed the supernatural with Byron, Shelley and Mary Godwin; he was a friend to the young Dickens; he visited Wilde in prison. His extraordinary life spanned a century. But as the world prepares to toast the bicentenary of Cannonbridge's most celebrated work, Judd's discovery leads him across the English canon and countryside, to the realisation that the spectre of Matthew Cannonbridge, planted so seamlessly into the heart of the 19th-century, might not be so dead and buried after all.