I have tried, in writing this book, to remain as true as possible to both the history and language of the era. In the following instances, however, I intentionally departed from accuracy for the sake of story:
While a group of grave-robbing medical students really did exist, they were called the Spunkers Club and hailed from Harvard. I took an author’s liberty in renaming them the Spelunkers and moving them to Philadelphia.
Though I most often refer to moths by their Latin names, I also incorporated the common names of the cinnabar, luna, and metalmark moths because of their descriptiveness. I could not, however, confirm their colloquial use during this time.
And finally, while the study of imaginal cells has existed since at least the 1600s, when Dutch biologist Jan Swammerdam conducted research on insects and their stages of development, the word imaginal was not used in this context until 1877, twenty-two years after The Corpse Queen takes place. But it is such a lovely word, I wanted to let Molly use it. And for you to know it.
Though humans don’t have imaginal cells, we do have imagination. And I’d like to believe it can act in much the same way—as the core of something beautiful and indestructible inside us, just waiting for a transformation to be born.