The Victorian and the Romantic ― A Memoir, a Love Story, and a Friendship Across Time

From the author of Bleaker House ("as funny as it is poignant" --Lena Dunham), the interwoven love stories of two female writers 150 years apart.

In 1857, English novelist Elizabeth Gaskell left behind her dull minister husband and their dreary provincial city and set off with her daughters for Rome. There she met a dazzling group of artists and writers, among them the American critic Charles Eliot Norton, and began a romance--with the city, with her new friends, and with Norton in particular--that transformed her. Norton was Gaskell's one true love--although there was no way for them to be together--and by his side, she knew she had reached the "tip-top point" of her life.
Over a century later, in 2013, Nell Stevens is in London and embarking on her dissertation--about the community of artists and writers living in Rome in the nineteenth century--while falling head over heels for a soulful American screenwriter living in Paris. But the romance soon founders, and her passion for academia fails to materialize. Suddenly at the nadir of her young life, she is drawn to Mrs. Gaskell. Could this indomitable Victorian author rescue Nell's pursuit of love, family, and a writing career? Lively, witty, and impossible to put down, The Victorian and the Romantic is a moving chronicle of two women, each charting a way of life beyond the rules of her time.

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.