Maintaining secrecy around their research is vital, since a group of scholars including James Blackadder, Leonora Stern, and especially Mortimer Cropper aggressively pursue any knowledge or discoveries concerning either poet.īy chance, Roland and Maud discover a collection of letters hidden in the house where Christabel lived in the later part of her life. Roland confides in Maud about the letters he has discovered, and she becomes equally consumed by a desire to know what happened. A relationship between the two would be a significant discovery, as Ash has always been perceived as a happily married man, and Christabel (who never married, and lived with a female companion for an extended period) has been widely considered a lesbian. Maud allows him to look at some documents which offer small hints that a correspondence between Christabel and Ash may have taken place in 18. He travels to Lincoln to meet with Maud Bailey, a scholar who specializes in researching LaMotte. Working from what he knows of Ash, Roland develops a hypothesis that the woman addressed in the letters is Christabel LaMotte, a less well-known Victorian writer who has been recently rediscovered by feminist scholars. Roland is intrigued and steals the letters from the library without telling anyone he has found them.

While looking through a book owned by Ash, he finds two drafts of letters addressed to an unknown woman whom Ash seems to have been struck by and sought to continue a conversation with. Roland Michell is a researcher who has recently completed his PhD studying the Victorian poet Randolph Henry Ash, but now finds himself frustrated by the lack of a permanent academic job. The novel opens in the autumn of 1986 in London.

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