"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
ménage."**--*Library Journal
"Delightful . . . entertaining."--Vogue
