Mrs Gaskell and Me
- Author Nell Stevens
- Narrator Nell Stevens
- Publisher Pan Macmillan
- Run Time 7 hours and 33 minutes
- Format Audio
- Genre Biography: writers, Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900, Literary studies: fiction, novelists and prose writers, Memoirs, Social and cultural history.
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What to expect
Winner of the 2019 Somerset Maugham Award
'A great galloping joy of a book - funny, lyrical, fast paced, heart-warming - a delicious celebration of love and life' Rebecca Stott, author of In the Days of Rain
In 1857, after two years of writing The Life of Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell fled England for Rome on the eve of publication. The project had become so fraught with criticism, with different truths and different lies, that Mrs Gaskell couldn’t stand it any more. She threw her book out into the world and disappeared to Italy with her two eldest daughters. In Rome she found excitement, inspiration, and love: a group of artists and writers who would become lifelong friends, and a man – Charles Norton – who would become the love of Mrs Gaskell’s life, though they would never be together.
In 2013, Nell Stevens is embarking on her Ph.D. – about the community of artists and writers living in Rome in the mid-nineteenth century – and falling drastically in love with a man who lives in another city. As Nell chases her heart around the world, and as Mrs Gaskell forms the greatest connection of her life, these two women, though centuries apart, are drawn together.
Mrs Gaskell and Me is about unrequited love and the romance of friendship, it is about forming a way of life outside the conventions of your time, and it offers Nell the opportunity – even as her own relationship falls apart – to give Mrs Gaskell the ending she deserved.
Critics Review
A great galloping joy of a book – funny, lyrical, fast paced, heart-warming – a delicious celebration of love and life
A truly lovely book – acutely observed and honest and melancholy
A tender, clever, sublimely crafted book that celebrates the struggles and triumphs of writing, love, and the desire for connection
Stevens has an analytical eye and a wonderful taste for absurdity . . . All cake is to be both had and eaten in this celebratory, charming, thoroughly fictional book.
A charming, distinctive memoir that is ultimately an exploration of the power and the pitfalls of storytelling
Extraordinary, delightful and very moving . . . Stevens’s affection for and relationship to these people is real, and very much alive . . . funny, heartfelt
Clever yet funny . . . Mrs Gaskell & Me has so many interesting things to say about love, loneliness and longing that I’m now inspired to read more of Mrs Gaskells’ novels.
Mrs Gaskell and Me is innovative and emotionally raw . . . a mature reflection on womanhood, and falling in love with men who we chase all over the world. Nell Stevens writes with a skill and passion all writers could learn from, and all readers will take joy in.
A witty, humane work of historical storytelling brilliantly enmeshed with an almost love story that intelligently shows us that it isn’t only the happy endings that come to define our lives, but also those loves that cannot be. Stevens’ clever, confiding voice is a worthy companion to those of us who have ever felt lost and have looked to the literature of the past for guidance. I loved it
Perfect
This year’s literary sensation
A mesmerizing literary levitation act . . . lovely and thoughtful
You won’t be able to put this down
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