The Victorian and the Romantic
A Memoir, a Love Story, and a Friendship Across Time
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…
Nell Stevens has a degree in English and creative writing from the University of Warwick, an M.F.A. in fiction from Boston University, and a Ph.D. in Victorian literature from King’s College London. She is the author of the memoir Bleaker House and is at work on a novel. www.nellstevens.com