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

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History meets memoir in two true-life love stories between two sets of writers--one unfolding in nineteenth century Rome, one in present-day Paris and London--both of which reveal the longings and ambitions of the very contemporary Nell Stevens.

In 1857, English novelist Elizabeth Gaskell completed her most famous work: the biography of her dear friend, the recently deceased Charlotte Bronte. As publication loomed, Elizabeth was keen to escape the reviews and, leaving her wholesome, dull minister husband at home, travelled with her daughters to Rome. And it was there that she met the American writer and critic, Charles Eliot Norton. Seventeen years her junior, he was the love of her life. She knew they could never be together--it would be an unthinkable breach--but when she returned home to Mr. Gaskell, she discovered to her horror that while she was gone he had betrayed her--betrayed her work--in a way that she is not sure she can ever forgive.
In 2013 Nell Stevens is in a PhD program in London, halfheartedly pursuing a post in academia to keep her afloat while she follows her true vocation as a writer. Her dissertation on the artistic expatriate community of nineteenth-century Rome isn't quite coming together. But scholarly questions take a back seat to her budding romance with Max, a soulful American with an unfinished screenplay. That is, until their relationship begins to founder, and the echoes between Nell's life and that of her historical subject become too strong to ignore.
As these two storylines meet up in delightful, funny, and unexpected ways, Mrs. Gaskell and Me evokes the bittersweet ache of lost love and the consolations of female writerly ambition.

272 pages, Paperback

First published August 7, 2018

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About the author

Nell Stevens

6 books296 followers
Nell Stevens writes memoir and fiction. She is the author of Bleaker House and Mrs Gaskell & Me (UK) / The Victorian & the Romantic (US/CAN), which won the 2019 Somerset Maugham Award. She was shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award, 2018. Her writing is published in The New York Times, Vogue, The Paris Review, The New York Review of Books, The Guardian, Granta and elsewhere. Nell is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Warwick.

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Displaying 1 - 30 of 191 reviews
Profile Image for emma.
2,477 reviews87k followers
June 18, 2024
i read a book that was on my tbr for 6 years.

waiting for my invite to the bravest person on earth contest.

this is, at times, a very frustrating book. our protagonist (read: our author) has the charming-to-yikes-inducing ratio of your average mid-2000s british romcom star. she is very funny and cool, and yet also you want to sit her down in a chair and say GET OVER THIS GUY AND WORK ON YOUR PhD.

but she gets there herself. alongside a lot of info about elizabeth gaskell, an author whose works i haven't historically liked and now want to pretend i do for having enjoyed learning about her.

lots of emotions.

bottom line: pros and cons but i'd rather focus on the pros! for once.

--------------------
tbr review

a memoir AND a love story AND a friendship across time? i'm on board for all three!
Profile Image for Diane S ☔.
4,901 reviews14.5k followers
February 21, 2019
I wasn't particularly fond of Nell's story. Dramatic pinnings of a lost love. Also, couldn't make heads nor tales of her random meanderings in Mrs. Gaskells life. I do, however, admire her creativity in trying a new, or new to me, form of memoir. It did also spark my interest in Gaskells biography of Charlotte Bronte and in reading a biography of Gaskells herself.
Profile Image for Katie Lumsden.
Author 3 books3,658 followers
December 20, 2018
I have to say, I completely adored this. It's an unusual, odd and intensely powerful novel, a story of love, books, writing and self-discovery. It's not often I read a book that discusses the theme of reading and the love of reading so brilliantly and so well - and of course, I loved the presence Elizabeth Gaskell has in this novel. I found it intensely moving, and would highly recommend.
Profile Image for Rebecca.
4,080 reviews3,370 followers
September 20, 2018
I was ambivalent about the author’s first book (Bleaker House), but for a student of the Victorian period this was unmissable, and the meta aspect was fun and not off-putting this time.

If the mere thought of reading about someone else’s thesis is enough to make your eyes glaze over – trust me, I know: my husband’s currently in the throes of writing up his PhD in Biology – never fear; Stevens has a light touch, and flits between Gaskell’s story and her own in alternating chapters. One strand covers the last decade of Gaskell’s life, but what makes it so lively and unusual is that Stevens almost always speaks of Gaskell as “you.” The intimacy of that address ensures that her life story is anything but dry. The other chapters are set between 2013 and 2017 and narrated in the present tense, which makes Stevens’s dilemmas and decisions feel immediate and pressing. For much of the first two years her PhD takes a backseat to her love life. She’s obsessed with Max, a friend and unrequited crush from her Boston University days who is now living in Paris. This is a whimsical, sentimental, wry book that will ring true for anyone who’s ever been fixated on an idea or put too much stock in a relationship that failed to thrive.

See my full review at Shiny New Books.
Profile Image for Susan.
2,961 reviews575 followers
August 29, 2018
For some time I have had, “Bleaker House,” by Nell Stevens on my reading radar. It lingers on my seemingly endless, ‘to be read,’ list – has lingered so long, in fact, that her next book came out, “Mrs Gaskell and Me.” Having decided that I should just get on and read something by Ms Stevens, whose work intrigues me, I settled down to try this and I am so glad I did.

This is something between a fictionalised biography and a real life memoir; interspersing the author’s work on her PhD thesis, and her relationship with a man she is in love with, and Elizabeth Gaskell’s decision to flee to Rome just before her contentious biography of Charlotte Bronte was published, where she met, and fell in love with, Charles Eliot Norton.

There are similarities between the stories of this modern student and author, and that of Mrs Gaskell. Mrs Gaskell left for Rome in 1857. She was married and went to Rome with two of her daughters, hoping to escape the reviews and arguments over the biography of her friend. Her delight in the group of artists and writers she met in Rome, who included writers, poets, an actress and sculptors, were over shadowed by her feelings for Charles Norton. Meanwhile, our narrator is about to embark on a PhD about that nineteenth century community of artists and writers, while, like Mrs Gaskell, becoming embroiled in a relationship with a fellow student, who she had been in love with for some time.

Although the story itself is fascinating, what makes this work is the author’s voice, which is warm and interesting, full of humour and self deprecation. Nell Stevens tells a story of unrequited love, of feelings of loss and of the complicated, difficult way we negotiate human relationships. Some people may find it possibly too slow, or too dry. I thought it was beautiful and I will certainly go back and read her former book. I received a copy of this from the publisher, via NetGalley, for review.

Profile Image for Roman Clodia.
2,819 reviews4,408 followers
June 19, 2018
This might be a bit of an acquired taste as Nell Stevens, a PhD student at Kings, London, writes a book about ‘Nell Stevens’, a PhD student at Kings, London... The introduction states upfront that ‘this is a work of imagination’ – and in a way it’s the anti-thesis that Stevens couldn’t write telling as it does the imaginatively-reconstructed story of Elizabeth – Lily, who knew? – Gaskell’s understated but important love affair with Charles Eliot Norton, an American whom she met in Rome. Undocumented other than between the lines, unsourced and unspoken, Stevens has found a clever way to imaginatively reconstruct emotions that are too untethered, too lacking in solid textual evidence to find their way into a real thesis.

Interspersed with Gaskell’s imagined story, is that of Nell herself: both her troubled love life with the elusive Max, and her PhD 'journey'. The latter is both funny and also eminently recognisable: the solitary nature of doctoral study, the sometimes weirdness of other peoples’ research (‘human-pig relationships in Jude the Obscure’!), the ‘work in progress’ seminars.

Stevens has a strong voice and I was happy to let her lead me through this somewhat fragmented story that balances somewhere between novelised biography and fictional memoir.

Thanks to Pan Macmillan/Picador for an ARC via NetGalley
Profile Image for Laura.
851 reviews328 followers
February 1, 2019
3.5 stars. This was a cross between a memoir of a time in the author's life when she was going for her Ph.D and a biography of part of Elizabeth Gaskell's life as well. I enjoyed it; it does make me want to read more of Gaskell's work, but I didn't love it.

I think Stevens is a good writer though, and I look forward to trying her novel that she is apparently working on now.

I'm glad I read this book, but for me, there's nothing bright and shiny about it. On to the next!
Profile Image for Amy.
Author 24 books2,509 followers
January 2, 2019
I adored this book! I generally don’t like novels that weave between a historical story and a modern day researcher/historian trying to figure her own life out as informed by this other past life (how is this a genre, much less one I know well enough to have an opinion about) but actually this is a memoir and a lovely depiction of a real person grappling with a subject she’s trying to write about and understand—and I do relate to that! I'm heading out now to pick up her other book.
Profile Image for Beth Bonini.
1,396 reviews312 followers
November 28, 2018
”’I’ve read all your work,” she says, ‘and I have to say, I’m still not entirely sure I understand what your point is.’
‘My point?’
‘Your argument. What is it, exactly, that you are trying to say?’
‘I want to say . . . I’m trying to say . . . I’m writing about ways of being close to people,’ I say. ‘I’m writing about the places where artists come together, and the ways they obtain closeness.’”


Nell Stevens decides to write a PhD dissertation about Elizabeth Gaskell - partly because she loves the novels, and partly because she is drawn to the personal voice that she finds in the Victorian writer’s letters - but finding an academic ‘argument’ for her research (to answer) is a bit of a problem. As she is the first to relate, her subject lacks focus.

Well, I found this book had that problem as well.

For those not familiar with the term, Nell Stevens is writing autofiction here. She is ventriloquising Elizabeth Gaskell, and imagining the author’s thoughts and actions during a particularly stressful and emotionally intense period of her life; and she is also engaged in the act of fictionalising events from her own life - a fact that she underscores with the Disclaimer about libel with which she begins the book. (“I have no people I want to libel. I have changed names, scenes, details, motivations and personalities. Every word has been filtered through the distortions of my memory, bias and efforts to tell a story.”)

In terms of Gaskell, Stevens begins with the year 1857. Gaskell has just completed The Life of Charlotte Bronte and it has been released into the publishing world under a cloud of controversy - and two legal cases of libel. Gaskell takes two of her daughters and escapes to Rome, where she finds a sympathetic community of artists and writers - and a soulmate in the form of American Charles Eliot Norton.

In terms of her own life, Stevens takes the Eurostar to Paris and discovers that her longtime crush “Max” (presumably not his real name) is in love with her as well. The love affair with Max is consuming, distracting, maddening and ultimately unsustainable. The love affair with Max is not particularly conducive to helping her finish her PhD on Gaskell; nor, as far as I can tell, does it particularly help her understand or illuminate the relationship that Gaskell has with Norton. But no matter . . . unless you want a more defined parallel, as I did.

Stevens’ PhD dissertation is in search of a subject and I often felt like this book was in search of a subject as well. The book contains a lot of “filler” (also known as the stuff of Stevens’ life): a partial list includes an awkward writer’s workshop at Shakespeare & Co., various medical experiments she participates in to raise money (mostly to fund her long-distance relationship with Max), an “all-expenses paid honeymoon in India” which she takes with her friend because she and Max have broken up, and many of the meetings she endures on the way to complete her PhD. A lot of this material is entertaining, but it only pertains tangentially to the life and subject of Elizabeth Gaskell. Your pleasure in this book will be mostly down to how bothered you are about that.

She is an able writer, but ultimately I felt like Gaskell was just “the hook” to write about her own life.
Profile Image for Bethany (Beautifully Bookish Bethany).
2,670 reviews4,590 followers
June 24, 2018
The Victorian and the Romantic is a genre-bending narrative that is immensely readable and at times funny and poignant. Part modern-day memoir, part historical examination, we follow dual narratives: that of the author as she embarks on a PhD in literature, and that of her research subject-Victorian author Elizabeth Gaskell. Separated by more than a century, the lives of the two women parallel each other in interesting ways. Both are writers who long for more out of life and both of them love men that they ultimately can't have.

I have read a couple of books by Elizabeth Gaskell and loved them, but I did not know very much about her personal life. In that sense, this book was fascinating and paints a portrait of a very relatable woman born in a time that afforded her limited opportunities. A vivacious and imaginative woman married to a quite stolid man, Mrs. Gaskell already had grown children when she began her writing career in earnest. Her success brought new opportunities, including an extended trip to Rome with her daughters. There she mixed with a free-thinking and diverse group of artists and writers, and it was also in Rome that she met and, perhaps, fell in love with a much younger man named Charles Elliot Norton.

Interspersed with discoveries from Mrs. Gaskell's life, are snippets of a modern memoir, detailing the author's complicated love life, research into Elizabeth Gaskell, and they ways in which those things collide. It is often quite entertaining and the book is very easy to read. The author makes a strong case for this years-long emotional attachment between Gaskell and Norton, carried on for the most part through trans-Atlantic letters and a lot of subtext- an impossible love for so many reasons. Mrs. Gaskell is truly brought to life in this portrayal and it made me want to know more about her. The emphasis here is more on telling a good story than on a tone of academic specificity, but paints a vivid picture that has me curious.

Above all, I think this book brings to life these Victorian figures in ways that make them seem recognizable as real people who longed for things and made do with what they had. That is truly an accomplishment. While some narrative license is clearly taken, I think this is well worth picking up. Thank you to Doubleday for sending me an early copy for review!
Profile Image for Moray Teale.
343 reviews9 followers
June 12, 2018
I received a free advance copy through Netgalley and Pan Macmillan in return for an honest review.

I should really stop reading stories that are by/about writers failing at their PhDs, they so often end up occupying a no-mans-land between fiction and academia that I find intensely irritating. In this offering of fictionalised biolgraphy and autobiography Nell's thesis on Mrs Gaskell is plagued by vagueness and a lack of commitment as well as the long-distance relationship she struggles to maintain with her partner between London and Paris and then London and Boston. Simultaneously there is a fragmentary second person narrative of Elizabeth's Gaskell's stay in Rome immediately following the publication of her controversial biography of Charlotte Bronte and her subsequent relationship with writer Charles Norton.

The problem for me was that Nell's narrative was frankly uninteresting. I could feel little sympathy with her academic woes (how on earth does one person manage to build a thesis around the misinterpretation of a single word, not once but twice?!) and I found myself echoing the weary questions of her professors and supervisors as they questioned her intent, her focus and the very point of her writing. Then I found myself asking the same questions about the story in front of me.

The Gaskell sections were so brief and lacking in depth and development that it really did feel like a faux-intellectual gloss intended to pad out the rather tepid contemporary love story. There was little sense of the characters (even worse when the fictionalisation is surely intended to breathe life into the fragmentary evidence that remains) despite the sad unconsummated love-story that lies at its heart.

There is little to link the two stories together except the vaguest sense of doomed love and the nebulous, unformed thesis. It needs more focus, more depth, more engagement and more commitment as the two stories put together fail to successfully redress the weaknesses of either.
Profile Image for Jani Ess.
794 reviews28 followers
August 22, 2018
I LOVED LOVED LOVED THIS BOOK!!!

To be clear, I am definitely the target audience for The Victorian and the Romantic because I have a Master's in English and I specialized in Victorian literature...and of course, like most academics, I considered for many years going on to do my PhD. I myself was interested in the works of female authors in the 19th century, mainly Charlotte Brontë and Elizabeth Gaskell, and so I knew I would relate personally to Nell Stevens' recounting of her time studying Victorian literature – but what I didn't anticipate was that so many of the lines she wrote would seem as though they were plucked straight from my own head. This is very much a memoir for a specific reader, one who is in love with classic literature but also disillusioned by the idea of studying it in a clinical, scientific manner, and not everyone will follow or relate to Stevens' thoughts and frustrations. I did, however, and so I would certainly be inclined to read more of Nell Stevens' work...and to be honest, I wish we could sit down for coffee and have a good rant, haha!

My Favourite Quote
"'I'm not cut out to be an academic...I don't think I care enough about the sorts of things academics care about....I like reading the writing of writers I love, and I like reading about writers I love. But I'm not sure I have anything additional to say about them. I think I'm more of an appreciative fan than a critic.'"

❥ ❥ ❥ ❥ ❥ (out of 5)
Profile Image for Sher.
543 reviews3 followers
February 21, 2019
What I did like:
Her creative process - taking her own life and reflecting on the life and attitudes, experiences, and emotions of a 19th C author.

I liked looking at Stevens's experience and looking at what she wrote about Gaskell and trying to see what was going on for Stevens- but basically I used fictional analysis on her work. I felt like I was reading fiction. Well, partly, it was weird and weird mix of bio and memoir.



What I did not like:
I would have preferred to read her Ph D thesis on Elizabeth Gaskell than her fictionalized account of Gaskell's life- too much guess work for me.

I have some serious concerns about this genre blending "New" Genre. In the age of fake news, I have become skeptical and suspicious and even rather resentful that anyone can make up what they like and put it out there. I would have appreciated this book more, if I had read a biography of Gaskell beforehand. Without really knowing Gaskell's life, we cannot know where we have been manipulated by the author to suit her interior life - the memoir part.
Profile Image for Kiki.
318 reviews46 followers
October 15, 2018
An absolutely wonderful and enjoyable memoir written by a woman working on her doctorate regarding Victorian author Elizabeth Gaskell. Nell Stevens s fascinated by Gaskell and her friendships and her fascination with Rome and especially, her unrequited love for younger \American Charles Eliot Norton. Ah, but the road to her doctorate is not a smooth one. Reflecting herself in the story of unrequited love, Nell is also madly in love with an American: the elusive Max. And when he finally does reciprocate, Nell's world--and her work--is completely derailed.

You don't have to know a single thing about Elizabeth Gaskell to appreciate every minute of this lovely and amusing book. And it did spark in me a desire to read some of Gaskell's works, so I'm excited to say, I've got those on the pile now! I loved getting to know both Gaskell (the Victorian of the title) and Stevens (the Romantic!). Great storytelling.
Profile Image for Melanie THEE Reader.
432 reviews61 followers
September 18, 2023
While I admire the author for combining genres (memoir and historical fiction) this book would’ve gotten a higher rating had it just been a memoir as her journey as a PhD candidate researching Gaskell OR a historical fiction novel about Elizabeth Gaskell’s time in Rome. The dual timeline wasn’t cohesive. I wanted it to to blend more a la Julie and Julia. But overall, this was a delightful read.
Profile Image for Edwin John Moorhouse Marr.
66 reviews14 followers
October 1, 2018
Normally I no longer write Goodreads reviews. But this book is one I really feel I need to, because this is one of the strangest reading experiences I have ever had. If I had read this two months ago, or read it in two months time, I would hate it. It would easily be a 2 star review for me, because in many ways this book does so many things I can't stand. It makes stuff up, it plays around with history in a fairly self-indulgent way (Samantha Ellis springs to mind), it intersperses reality with fiction, past with present in a way that is in many senses, entirely ill at ease.

And yet over the summer, I have recently gone through an experience remarkably similar to the one Nell Stevens describes in this book. I too am a PhD student, self-disciplined, career-driven, I love my work (also in the 19th century), and am in many ways independent minded. And yet, like Nell Stevens' narrator, who is so clearly based on the author I feel no issue in referring to her as 'Nell', I met a man who just some how slipped under my defences. And so, I completely understand every single emotion she feels and defines in this book, because I have felt it too. When she sits in the British Library and can't concentrate because St Pancras is only a three minute walk away, and from there she can board a Eurostar to her lover in Paris. Or when she gets a message from her boyfriend telling her 'I'm sorry, but I can't see you right now', or when she hates him for how he treats her but adores him at the same time, or when she reads Gaskell's letters but constantly reads her own situation into them and intersperses her own lost love with the narrative of Gaskell's; I am there with her always.

Reading this book was an uncanny experience, because it felt so deeply personal to the core elements of my own recent past, and yet it was also incredibly cathartic because of it. To share in Nell's pain, felt in a strangely perverted sense, like allowing Nell to share in my own, just as Nell shares in Gaskell's, and so in turn Gaskell shares in Nell's across the centuries. What a fantastic chain of association! Gaskell to Nell Stevens to Edwin Marr, lost love, heartache, disappointment reverberating and echoing again and again down the centuries, writer to reader to writer to reader. Forgive the somewhat rambling nature of this review, I have only just finished the book, and my thoughts are scattered. But this book came onto my bookshelf at the exact moment it needed to, and I am grateful to share in Nell and Gaskell's pain, and by extension, to allow them to carry some of my own, too.
Profile Image for Julie Sotelo.
160 reviews9 followers
October 24, 2018
If only I could make my own dissertation fun to read about...
Profile Image for Dolores.
Author 22 books41 followers
August 23, 2018
Many scholars would like to write memoirs or novels, and many novelists would like to be scholars. British writer Nell Stevens has mastered all these skills. In her new book, The Victorian and the Romantic, Stevens combines two stories: an account of her own romance with an American named Max, and a retelling of the flirtation between British novelist Elizabeth Gaskell and American critic Charles Eliot Norton in 1857. Rome is the center of Mrs. Gaskell's adventures, and Stevens renders the place with great verve. Her own romance spans Paris, London, and New England. This charming and elegant book will delight the literary reader alert to the nineteenth century correspondence underpinning the Gaskell plot, and the contemporary reader eager to read about love and work in the life of a talented woman. Highly recommended.
Profile Image for Aya.
160 reviews8 followers
September 29, 2018
I LIKED bleaker house but I LOVE this book which has so much about heartbreak and love and the shades of affection. Like bleaker house this book weaves stories and styles but keeps a true character at the center— it reaches out on a limb like bleaker but catches itself.
Profile Image for Holly.
204 reviews3 followers
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April 11, 2021
In this half biography and half memoir, Nell Stevens alternates chapters discussing her own life with descriptions of Gaskell’s life from the mid(ish) 1800s, with a focus on their romantic relationships.

About halfway through the book, I noticed that while I was reading about Gaskell eagerly, the sections about Stevens had become dull and repetitive. I began to skim those chapters.

The writing is good. Stevens’ affection for Gaskell is clear, and the sections about the 19C writer are engaging and vivid. However, Stevens’ writing about her own relationship soon devolves to tedious status updates and minutiae—the kind of details usually shared with close friends, but not of interest to others.

Her attempt to link her own romance to Gaskell’s is an interesting idea but...


Spoilers ahead!


Spoliers ahead!


Gaskell’s romance was a forbidden one, and it’s a gossipy pleasure and, later, poignant. If you’ve ever had a friend or relative in unrequited love (as with Stevens), you know how quickly it becomes wearisome to all but the lovelorn party.
Profile Image for Melissa.
2,708 reviews173 followers
August 5, 2018
I was interested in this book because I liked Stevens’s previous work Bleaker House and also the work of Elizabeth Gaskell. And, well, this combination memoir-imaginative biography (biographical novella) combining Stevens’s work for her PhD about 19th century artists, her love for Gaskell’s work and the unfulfilled love affair (?) between Gaskell and Charles Eliot Norton is a strange hodge-podge of styles. The choice to use 2nd person narration for the Gaskell bio parts took a while to get used to and in the end I’m not sure if it worked that well.
Profile Image for Alyssa McNaughton.
108 reviews12 followers
August 21, 2018
*I received an ARC of this novel on Net Galley in exchange for my honest review*

Wow Wow Wow. I absolutely ADORED this half biography of Mrs. Gaskell’s life/ real life memoir of the author. It was refreshing, witty, emotional and relatable. I was surprised how much I fell in love with the struggles of Nell and how she wrote about them so honestly. It takes a lot for a writer to have this level of transparency and still communicate their feelings with such an eb and flow of beautiful words.
Profile Image for Michelle.
167 reviews6 followers
July 20, 2020
Perhaps specific to fans of Mrs. Gaskell herself (or the Brontes, or Jane Austen), but I LOVED the way this author described her own story in relation to the events of Mrs. Gaskell's life and literary work. Although it isn't strictly a faithful memoir of Nell's own life, so many of the experiences she relates have the ring of truth to them, she must have had similar experiences. I look forward to reading more of her work in future.
Profile Image for Catherine.
21 reviews3 followers
August 9, 2018
Thank you to Doubleday Books for the free review copy & Out of Print epigraph print!
I spotted this book floating around Instagram as part of the second Doubleday summer box giveaway and I couldn’t resist requesting a review copy of The Victorian and the Romantic. First, that cover: millennial pink, the trench coat? (YES, I choose way too many of my books based on the cover art alone but I can’t resist a killer aesthetic above all else!)
I was an English major so this book truly spoke to me. I haven’t read any Elizabeth Gaskell, though, and my plan was to read one of her books alongside The Victorian and the Romantic for the true experience, but my local library didn’t have any Gaskell--I guess the classics are dead according to the Geneva Public Library. My fiance did pre-order a copy of North and South that I had my eye on, though, so I’ll get to dive into that come September. Even though I didn’t get my own literature-meets-memoir class experience while reading, I really loved this book. Throughout, Stevens alternates between her own experience as a PhD candidate, juggling her long distance love, apathy toward her subject matter and academia as a whole, and her medical/reproductive struggles, and Mrs. Gaskell (as Stevens prefers to address her), living in Rome after the publication of her scandalous posthumous biography of her close friend, Charlotte Bronte. And though Stevens was struggling to feel the same obsession that her classmates seemed to be feeling about their subjects, her story still reminded me of what I loved about being a student: spending my days in the library and the rare book room, pouring over texts for some window into the author’s life, writing and writing and writing.
I know that, unlike Stevens, I’ll never pursue a PhD. The idea of going to grad school for literature did pique my interest (and a number of professors suggested the path to me, admittedly because enrollment in my college’s grad program was low) but sadly, that’s not the path for me.
Anyway. I loved this book! For a former-academic like me, it’s a perfect read, but it’s also not dense and heavy like literary criticism. It’s not exclusionary, only to be read by someone with a degree in literary analysis, but for everyone with a love of literature and books.
It toes the line between memoir and biography-- I’m not usually the biggest fan of biographies but I do love memoirs. Nell made her own story and Mrs. Gaskell’s story equally compelling. I expected to me more invested in Nell as she fell in love, travelled to America for fellowships and romantic weekends, and butted heads with her PhD counselor. But I found myself equally thrilled to read about Gaskell’s time in Rome, exploring the sights, having early morning coffee with Norton, and returning to home to a book that was high contested and a husband who she wasn’t the least bit interested in. Gaskell’s life was interesting, and here was a woman, an author, I knew nothing about and even going into this book, wasn’t particularly interested in learning more about.
I’m so glad I read this book! I think it came to me at the perfect time in my life. I’m getting ready, now, to start applying to grad school for the spring semester to pursue a Masters in Library Science. I’ve found myself, lately, really missing school. I know I’ll never be able to go back to the time in my life when I lived in a dorm, ate all my meals from the on-campus Subway and the school bookstore Starbucks, and spent countless nights holed up in the library or at endless sorority recruitment events. But of course, that’s not the only thing to love about school: What I really miss is learning and I’m excited to get back to that.
595 reviews
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May 11, 2024
My book group will be reading North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell. I learned about this book from the podcast, Backlisted. Reserved the book from our local library.

Anyone who is pursuing a Ph.D in literature and needs to select a topic and write about the topic and then defend the dissertation might like to read this book. At times ABSURD - the academic world!

From The New Yorker:
"Admittedly, I am at the center of the demographic most likely to enjoy a memoir about having a passionate attachment to a female Victorian novelist, but “The Victorian and the Romantic,” a new book by the English writer Nell Stevens, about her same passionate attachment, would be utterly engaging even if you’d never heard of Mrs. Gaskell. (Indeed, Stevens’s American publisher is assuming you haven’t: in the U.K., the book is called “Mrs. Gaskell and Me.”) Elizabeth Gaskell, the once-popular author of “Mary Barton” and “North and South,” lived in the English city of Manchester in the mid-nineteenth century, and is now read principally by Ph.D. students, of which Stevens was one in the period she describes in this winning book. (It follows her début memoir, “Bleaker House,” a deft and funny account of trying and failing to write a novel while sequestered in the Falkland Islands.)

In “The Victorian and the Romantic,” Stevens weaves together two love stories. One is the rapport between the best-selling, middle-aged Gaskell and the much younger American critic Charles Eliot Norton, whom she meets while sojourning in Rome; the other is Stevens’s own long-distance relationship with an American writer named Max. She embeds both those narrative threads in yet another love story, that of her admiration and affection for Gaskell. The result is a gentle satire on the ways of academia—I was particularly amused by her description of a seminar discussing pig-human relations in Thomas Hardy’s “Jude the Obscure”—coupled with a painfully credible account of late-twenties love, freighted with all its unanswerable questions about the future. Stevens is a very artful writer—the structure she chooses is inspired—and the book builds to a surprising, and surprisingly moving, ending. “I had never encountered a writer who could fill a page so entirely with herself,” Stevens writes, of Gaskell. She does a pretty good job of it herself."

ME: I liked this book, quirky in a good way! The author is in a Ph.D. program (Kings College at University of Cambridge) and she is in the "doctoral seminar" where each student will present his or her proposed research project to the group. Some of the presentations (p.31):
[Un]realism and [Hyper]realism in the Work of J.G. Ballard
Katherine Mansfield, the Form of the Short Story and the Tyrannies of Female Fashion
The Role of the Doorstep in the Fiction of Charles Dickens.

One wonders of the absurdities of dissertations in the English Department!!!!!

(p.29) Nell Stevens isn't exactly sure of her dissertation title/subject ("My presentation is, at best, a guess: I have no clear idea what my thesis is going to be about.") except it will be about Elizabeth Gaskell and her American friend Charles Eliot Norton. "Sometimes I dream I am in America, but it looks like home, which I know it is not." Elizabeth Gaskell writes to Charles Eliot Norton (1860). After the presentations, the questions come... (p. 33) Then, the professor...."I think, Nell, there may be a slight misreading underpining your analysis," he says. ... "The quote you gave, in which Gaskell dreams of America and finds that it looks like home." "Yes?" I have the impression the professor is enjoying dragging this out. "I think, if you look carefully, you'll realize that it does not in fact say 'home' in that letter. It says 'Rome.' It says, 'Sometimes I dream I am in America, but it always looks like Rome.'" I scribble in my notebook furiously. "Oh, that's really interesting," I say. "Thank you. I'll look into that."

Not that is FUNNY!!! So Nell Stevens, I'm assuming she is now Dr. Nell Stevens, can laugh at herself!

When she defends her dissertation: 2016 - VIVA (p. 240) "The viva voce," reads the King's website, "(literally: live voice, or by the living voice) is an oral examination whereby your Ph.D. work is examined by two examiners, usually specialists in the field." by my living voice, I will defend my thesis against the attacks of an art historian who has published a book on the relationship between contagious diseases and artistic influence in nineteenth century Rome, and a Romanticist who specializes in female travellers in Rome. .... Read p. 241 for: Issues my examiners have with my research: the last bullet point: There are some strange, misplaced commas in my bibliography. WHAT?! Now that's picky!

ROME. My husband teaches in Rome in the fall, so I spend lots of time in Rome. And many of the great 19th century writers, artists, etc. LOVED Rome as many people still do today!

Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel, The Marble Faun, was based in Rome. It featured William Wetmore Story's" statue of Cleopatra. (p. 194) The statue is in the Metropolitan Art Museum - Gallery 700. Also, it seems that Mr. Story had an apartment in the Palazzo Barberini. YES. Here's a link:
https://scrc-kb.libraries.wm.edu/will.... The statue of Cleopatra is at the MET. I would like to see his statue of The Grieving Angel at the non-Catholic cemetery in Rome.

Charles Eliot Norton (1827 - 1908) comes from the same Eliot family - T.S. Eliot. He is a much younger man when they meet in Rome (lookup Via Sant'Isidoro in Rome) in the year 1857. He is 30 years old. Elizabeth (married with children) is 45 or 47 (depending on her year of birth - 1810 or 1812). He had read North and South and when he meets her in Rome exclaims, "I am utterly devoted to North and South." There is a spark/connection. They never kiss! (p. 252) After the trip to Rome, they will correspond. In 1862, he will write to say that he is engaged to Miss Susan Sedgwick. Their first child will be named, Elizabeth Gaskell Norton. Elizabeth Gaskell will die in 1865.

The ending of the book is appropriate. Mrs. Gaskell never visits America, but Nell Stevens imagines the journey. (Funny because one of the "issues" with Nell Stevens dissertation was "Inadequate critical distinction between fiction and non-fiction sources." (p. 241)

Her relationship with MAX made me think of past relationships in my life.

p. 239 -
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342 reviews88 followers
January 23, 2019
Very mixed feelings about this book.
I like the idea - two writers a century and a half apart but apparently finding common ground in their lives.
Nell Stevens describes her personal and academic life over a few years in chapters alternating with that of the life of Mrs Gaskell in her late 40s when she met Charles Eliot Norton.
The main problem for me was Steven's relationship with 'Max', a man who practically had 'keep away' stamped on his forehead - how could she not have heard those warning bells ring long and loud?
Their 'relationship' stretched the bounds of credulity to such an extent that I actually found myself thinking that he couldn't possibly exist and had been invented to aid the conceit of a bond with Mrs Gaskell. And that got me thinking that was this indeed a novel about a failed relationship (with a bit of Gaskell thrown in to bulk it out) rather than the memoir it's sold as?
The book is described on the dust jacket as 'wildly funny' which surprises me as I didn't spot any humour at all!
The Mrs Gaskell chapters were so much better (4 stars) than the Stevens ones (2 stars).
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