Lady's Maid by Margaret Forster

Lady's Maid by Margaret Forster

Regular price
Checking stock...
Regular price
Checking stock...
World of Books

At World of Books, you’ll find millions of preloved reads at great prices, from bestsellers to hidden gems. Every book you buy saves money and helps reduce waste, so you can read more for less while giving stories a second life.

The feel-good place to buy books
  • Free US shipping over $15
  • Buying preloved emits 41% less CO2 than new
  • Millions of affordable books
  • Give your books a new home - sell them back to us!

Lady's Maid by Margaret Forster

Fascinating . . . The reader is treated to a revealing account of the passionate romance between Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning through the eyes of an intimate observer.--Booklist

Young and timid but full of sturdy good sense and awakening sophistication, Lily Wilson arrives in London in 1844, becoming a lady's maid to the fragile, housebound Elizabeth Barrett. Lily is quickly drawn to her mistress' s gaiety and sharp intelligence, the power of her poetry, and her deep emotional need. It is a strange intimacy that will last sixteen years.

It is Lily who smuggles Miss Barrett out of the gloomy Wimpole Street house, witnesses her secret wedding to Robert Browning in an empty church, and flees with them to threadbare lodgings and the heat, light, and colors of Italy. As housekeeper, nursemaid, companion, and confidante, Lily is with Elizabeth in every crisis-birth, bereavement, travel, literary triumph. As her devotion turns almost to obsession, Lily forgets her own fleeting loneliness. But when Lily's own affairs take a dramatic turn, she comes to expect the loyalty from Elizabeth that she herself has always given.

Praise for Lady's Maid

A] wonderful novel . . . fully imagined and persuasive fiction.--The New York Times Book Review

Absorbing . . . heartbreaking . . . grips the reader's imagination on every page . . . Margaret] Forster paints a vivid picture of class, station, hypocrisy and survival in Victorian society.--San Francisco Chronicle

Extremely readable . . . The author's sense of the nineteenth century seems innate.--The New Yorker

Highly recommended . . . an engrossing novel of the colorful Browning m nage.--Library Journal

Delightful . . . entertaining.--Vogue
SKU Unavailable
ISBN 13 9780385417921
ISBN 10 0385417926
Title Lady's Maid
Author Margaret Forster
Condition Unavailable
Binding Type Hardback
Publisher Doubleday Books
Year published 1991-02-01
Number of pages 548
Cover note Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.