Lady's Maid

“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

Author Biography

Born in Carlisle, England, Margaret Forster was the author of many successful and acclaimed novels, including Have the Men Had Enough?, Lady’s Maid, Diary of an Ordinary Woman, Is There Anything You Want?, Keeping the World Away, Over, and The Unknown Bridesmaid. She also wrote bestselling memoirs—Hidden Lives, Precious Lives and My Life in Houses—and biographies. She was married to writer and journalist Hunter Davies and lived in London and the Lake District. She died in February 2016, just before her last novel, How to Measure a Cow, was published.