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Houghton Mifflin
May 2008
On Sale: May 13, 2008
288 pages
ISBN: 0618746579
EAN: 9780618746576
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
A stunning novel about two women and two marriages --
George Eliot at the end of her life, and another woman a
century later. The year is 1880 and the setting is Venice. Marian Evans --
whose novels under the pen name George Eliot have placed
her among the famed Englishwomen of her time -- has come to
this enchanted city on her honeymoon. Newly married to John
Cross, twenty years her junior, she hopes to put her guilt
to rest. Marian lived, unmarried, with George Henry Lewes
for twenty-five years, until his death. She took a
tremendous risk and paid a high price for that illicit
union, but she also achieved happiness and created art. Now
she wants to love again. In this new marriage, in this
romantic place, can this writer give herself the happy
ending that she provided for Middlemarch's Dorothea Brooke? The parallel story of a sculptor named Caroline Spingold
brings us to Venice one hundred years later, in 1980.
Caroline's powerful, wealthy older husband has brought her
to the city against her will, to celebrate their tenth
wedding anniversary. Having spent a perfect childhood
summer in Venice with her parents, before her father left
her mother, Caroline had vowed never to return. In alternating chapters linked by the themes of art, love,
and marriage, The World Before Her tells of these two
women -- and their surprising similarities. In a city where
the canals reflect memory as much as light, they both
confront desire, and each assesses what she has and who she
is. At the heart of this sumptuously and evocatively
written novel lies the eternal dilemma of how to find love
and sustain it, without losing one's self.
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