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, Elizabeth Gaskell set sail for Rome, a city that would prove to be a place of inspiration and love: she would make enduring friendships, and meet a man - Charles Norton - who would become the love of her life.

In 2013, Nell Stevens is writing about Mrs Gaskell in Rome, and falling drastically in love with a man who lives in another city altogether. 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, and for Nell, Mrs Gaskell becomes more than a figure from the past. Here is a confidante, a friend, a woman who - living outside the conventions of her time - might have some wisdom to offer Nell.

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.

From the author of the beloved Bleaker House, Mrs Gaskell and Me is the story of two very modern women and their two love affairs, separated by a hundred and fifty years.

About the Author
Nell Stevens has a First in English and Creative Writing from Warwick, after which she went on to study Arabic and Comparative Literature at Harvard, and to receive a Marcia Trimble Fellowship and the Florence Engel Randall Graduate Fiction Award for her MFA in Fiction at Boston University. She is currently researching a Ph.D. in Victorian literature at King's College London. She was a finalist in the 2011 Elle magazine Writing Talent Contest, and a runner-up in both the 2014 Mslexia Memoir Competition and the 2015 Mslexia Short Story Prize. Her first book, Bleaker House, was published in 2017.

Reviews
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
A truly lovely book - acutely observed and honest and melancholy -- Jessie Greengrass, author of Sight
A tender, clever, sublimely crafted book that celebrates the struggles and triumphs of writing, love, and the desire for connection -- Kiran Millwood Hargrave, author of The Girl of Ink and Stars
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. -- Claire Harman * The Guardian *
A charming, distinctive memoir that is ultimately an exploration of the power and the pitfalls of storytelling * Mail on Sunday *
Extraordinary, delightful and very moving . . . Stevens's affection for and relationship to these people is real, and very much alive . . . funny, heartfelt * Irish Times *
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. * Red Magazine *
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. -- Laura Jane Williams, author of Ice Cream for Breakfast
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 -- Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett
Perfect -- Lena Dunham on Bleaker House
This year's literary sensation -- Evening Standard on Bleaker House
A mesmerizing literary levitation act . . . lovely and thoughtful -- Vogue on Bleaker House
You won't be able to put this down * Elle Magazine *
Winningly self-deprecating * New Yorker *
Fascinating * Washington Post *


Awards
Short-listed for Somerset Maugham Award 2019 (UK).



Book Information
ISBN 9781509868216
Author Nell Stevens
Format Paperback
Page Count 256
Imprint Picador
Publisher Pan Macmillan
Weight(grams) 194g
Dimensions(mm) 197mm * 131mm * 18mm