Bloomsbury's Late Rose

A Novel

by Pen Pearson

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Pub Date Sep 01 2019 | Archive Date Sep 04 2019

Chickadee Prince Books LLC | Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA), Members' Titles

Historical Fiction | LGBTQIAP+

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Description

A poet in Edwardian London. A woman struggling to let her voice be heard.

In 1894, sisters Charlotte and Anne Mew take a solemn vow never to marry, and never to pass on the family curse: insanity. The spinster Mew sisters descend into genteel poverty, their mother on an invalid's sofa, Anne, the painter, in a menial job.

But Charlotte, the poet, will find immortality, and unexpected love.

Her path will require that she keep secrets and make sacrifices that may be too much even for Charlotte's determined spirit.

In Bloomsbury's Late Rose, Pen Pearson, herself an accomplished poet, has imagined a vivid and affecting story of a woman's life in Edwardian London that will engage and move every reader.

A poet in Edwardian London. A woman struggling to let her voice be heard.

In 1894, sisters Charlotte and Anne Mew take a solemn vow never to marry, and never to pass on the family curse: insanity. The...

Advance Praise

“Pearson imagines the life of the early 20th-century English poet Charlotte Mew in this novel. Charlotte and her sister Anne have always been close. After their two siblings, Henry and Freda, were institutionalized for mental instability in 1894, the sisters swore to each other that they would never get married or have children, in order to avoid passing on what they saw as a family curse. Now, in 1909, the nearly 40-year-old women are still single, living with their ailing mother, her maid, and other tenants in a modest house in [the] Bloomsbury area of London. Charlotte … begins to express her rich interiority in her poetry.… She’s finally building the life that she always wanted as an independent, artistic woman — but things become complicated when she falls in love with a woman herself. Pearson writes in an elegant prose that summons the era of the novel in precise detail…. In its pacing and style, the novel earnestly evokes the works of Edith Wharton and other writers from the period without ever stumbling into parody or awkward pastiche. In Mew’s story, Pearson not only uncovers central questions of first-wave feminism, but also finds an opportunity to resurrect an intriguing and worthwhile real-life poet for posterity. A rich, enjoyable historical novel with compelling themes.”
— Kirkus Reviews

“This beautiful story transported me to a different era. Charlotte Mew is a haunting heroine: brave, talented and tormented. I loved her, and I loved this novel.”
— Susan Breen, author of Maggie Dove’s Detective Agency (Penguin Random House, 2016)

“Waiting politely in the shadow of history, poet Charlotte Mew finally steps into the light to take her place amongst the Bloomsbury writing elite thanks to this elegant, painstakingly researched and beautifully written novel by Pen Pearson. This is a truly vivid and wonderfully insightful reimagining of Mew's professional and personal triumphs and tragedies. Written with such skill that I found myself walking the Edwardian London streets alongside Mew, this novel does what great historical fiction should: it brilliantly illuminates the past.”
— Tracey Iceton, author of Herself Alone in Orange Rain (Cinnamon Press, 2017)