Emma Donoghue’s new novel, Learned by Heart, is the story of Anne Lister and Eliza Raine, two real historical figures. Lister, best known for her diaries in which she writes about her lesbian relationships as well as her daily life in West Yorkshire, has been made famous to modern audiences thanks to the recent BBC/HBO drama series, Gentleman Jack. Eliza Raine, her first lover, is believed to be a possible inspiration for Bertha Mason, Mr Rochester’s wife in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.

Eliza was born in Madras (now Chennai), the younger daughter of an Indian mother and an English father, who was working there as a surgeon for the East India Company. Following her father’s death, Eliza and her sister were sent to England to live with a Yorkshire family, the Duffins. We join Eliza at her boarding school in York, where she has made several friends but still feels that she doesn’t entirely fit in due to her background and skin colour. When Anne Lister arrives at the school one day in 1805 and is told to share Eliza’s bedroom, Eliza is immediately drawn to the new girl. Lister, as she prefers to be known, is a strong personality – intelligent, rebellious and an ‘outsider’ like Eliza herself. As the two grow closer, their friendship develops into romantic love, but as two fourteen-year-olds in 19th century England they are denied the freedom to be who they really are.

Interspersed with the account of their schooldays are several letters written by Eliza to Lister ten years later. Through these letters, we are aware from the beginning of the novel that Eliza will end up in an asylum, but we don’t know exactly how or why she came to be there. Although we do learn a little bit more as the story progresses, it’s not fully explained until Emma Donoghue’s author’s note at the end of the book. The novel itself concentrates almost entirely on Lister and Eliza’s time at the Manor School in York, something I hadn’t expected when I first started reading, and I do feel that rather than the letters, it would have been more interesting to have had a sequel continuing the story after they leave school and become adults.

After last year’s Haven, an unusual novel about a group of 7th century monks settling on an uninhabited island, Donoghue is on more familiar territory with this one (several of her earlier books have also been set in the 18th and 19th centuries). A huge amount of research has obviously gone into the writing of this book and her portrayal of everyday life in an English girls’ school during the time of the Napoleonic Wars feels vivid and real. However, I don’t think we really needed so many long, detailed descriptions of every game the girls played at school!

Anne Lister is an intriguing character and seeing her only through Eliza Raine’s eyes gives a real sense of the qualities that Eliza finds so attractive. It also means that we don’t fully get to know Lister or to understand her innermost thoughts and feelings, so she is always surrounded by a slight aura of mystery. I didn’t always like her and as she was clearly the dominant force in their relationship, I felt concerned for Eliza as it seemed obvious she was going to get hurt.

As I’ve said, I think I would have been more interested in learning about the adult lives of the characters, but I did still enjoy the book and thought it was a great introduction to the lives of these two fascinating women.

Thanks to Picador for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

This is book 14/20 of my 20 Books of Summer 2023

This is book 35/50 for the 2023 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge.