The Victorian and the Romantic Paperback by Nell Stevens

Product Details

• Publisher: Vintage Canada (2019-07-16)
• Language: English
• Paperback: 256 pages
• ISBN-13: 9780735274204
• Item Weight: 453.6 grams
• Dimensions: 9.0 x 6.0 x 1.0 cm

History meets memoir in two irresistible true-life romances--one set in 19th century Rome, one in present-day Paris and London--linked by a bond between women writers a hundred years apart.

In 2013, graduate student Nell Stevens toils away on a dissertation about artistic and literary circles in nineteenth-century Rome. Bored with academia and thrown off after falling for a soulful American screenwriter living in Paris, she finds herself drawn to the biography of English novelist Elizabeth Gaskell who, in 1857, left her dull minister husband behind in England and set off with her daughters on a transformative trip to Rome. There she met a dazzling group of artists and writers, including the American critic Charles Eliot Norton. Seventeen years her junior, Norton was Gaskell's one true love. They could not be together--the affair would have been an unthinkable breach. But by his side in Rome, Mrs. Gaskell knew she had reached the "tip-top point" of her life. Could this indomitable Victorian author help modern-day Nell salvage her foundering pursuit of love, family and a writing career?

History meets memoir in this vibrant, witty, and hugely original literary chronicle of two women, each charting a way of life beyond the rules of her time.

About the Author

NELL STEVENS has a degree in English and Creative Writing from the University of Warwick, an MFA in fiction from Boston University, and a PhD in Victorian literature from King's College London. She is the author of the memoir Bleaker House and is at work on a novel.