Small Pleasures takes place in Hayes, a town in Kent County in England—the town where Clare Chambers currently lives. Her knowledge of and experience with the town and its history shape the novel; most importantly, the train derailment in the novel is a historical fact of Kent history. Chambers explains in her afterword that, though she resided in Kent for many years, she never knew of the Lewisham railway disaster until she started researching the novel, even though this 1957 accident was “the second-worst peacetime railway disaster in British history” (339). Stumbling on this event helped Chambers frame the setting for her novel.

For research, Chambers relied on multiple magazines, newspapers, and novels about Kent and Britain in the 1950s. Studying ephemeral like this rather than history written after the fact allows the novel to have a sense of immediacy, immersing readers in the local culture and daily life of Kent as it was experienced by people living at that time. Chambers’s narrative tightly fits into the trappings and customs of the 1950s, featuring the time’s attitudes toward women’s independence and domestic responsibilities, LGBTQ+ relationships, intellectual disability, and sexual assault.

Chambers uses historical articles and interviews to enhance world-building and characterization—and includes such articles in the novel itself, a literary element explored later in this guide.