Claire Harman

"From award-winning biographer Claire Harman, [this book] is the fascinating story of a Victorian-era murder that rocked literary London, leading Charles Dickens, William Thackeray, and Queen Victoria herself to wonder: Can a novel kill? Early in the morning of May 6, 1840, on a highly respectable Mayfair street, a footman answered the door to a panic-stricken maid from a nearby house. Her elderly master, Lord William Russell, was lying in bed with...

Gale Researcher Guide for: Jane Austen is selected from Gale's academic platform Gale Researcher. These study guides provide peer-reviewed articles that allow students early success in finding scholarly materials and to gain the confidence and vocabulary needed to pursue deeper research.

He thrilled readers the world over with breathtaking tales of pirates (Treasure Island) and monsters (The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde). But the short life of writer Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-94) was as adventurous as almost anything in his fiction. He was both engineer and aesthete, Covenanter and atheist, dutiful son and reckless lover. His travels, illnesses, creative struggles, volatile relationships, and titanic quarrels were the...

"To become a nun in the fourteenth century was often a business transaction rather than a spiritual calling; it is small wonder, then, that the inhabitants of the Benedictine convent of Oby are prey to worldly ambitions, frustrations, pleasures and jealousies. An outbreak of the Black Death the collapse of the convent spire and a disappearance are the dramas that strike this cloistered community, which is brought vividly to life in Sylvia Townsend...

In revolutionary Paris, a disaffected Victorian wife becomes enraptured by her husband’s mistress—a “brilliantly entertaining” historical fiction novel that was “far ahead of its time” (Guardian).

“One of the great under-read British novelists of the 20th century . . . my favorite of her novels.” —Sarah Waters, author of Fingersmith

Sophia Willoughby,...