'The Victorian And The Romantic' Attempts To Link Writers Through The Ages
Nell Stevens's new memoir is an uneven but pleasant book that braids her story of doing a PhD amid an uneasy love affair with imaginary scenes from the life of her 19th century research subject.
First, Nell Stevens wrote Bleaker House, a memoir about failing to write a novel. Now, in The Victorian and the Romantic, she has written a memoir about struggling to write her doctoral dissertation.
Writing about how writing is hard tends to be solipsistic and dreary, but these procrastination-born books have, instead, a kind of truant charm, but we're all here now so we may as well go get a drink.
