The new life

Two Victorian marriages, two dangerous love affairs, one extraordinary partnership . . .

‘Enthralling . . . I’m confident I have read one of the most beautifully crafted, lavishly imagined novels of 2023’ Sunday Times

‘Excellent . . . One of the most embodied historical novels I have read’ Guardian

‘Brims with intelligence and insight, impressed with all the texture (and fog) of fin de siècle London’ New York Times

‘Electrifying’ Anne Enright
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After a lifetime spent navigating his desires, John Addington, a married man, has met Frank, a working-class printer.

Meanwhile Henry Ellis’s wife Edith has fallen in love with a woman – who wants Edith all to herself.

When in 1894 John and Henry decide to write a revolutionary book together, intended to challenge convention and the law, they are both caught in relationships stalked by guilt and shame. Yet they share a vision of a better world, one that will expand possibilities for men and women everywhere.

Their daring book threatens to throw John and Henry, and all those around them, into danger. How far should they go to win personal freedoms? And how high a price are they willing to pay for a new way of living?

‘A very fine new writer’ Kate Atkinson

‘A novel that promises to scrape back the polished veneer of late 19th-century England’ Daily Mail