The True Heart

Description

A love story set in Victorian England by one of the most original writers of the twentieth century Leaving her orphanage at sixteen, Sukey Bond finds employment as a servant in the remote New Easter Farm, deep within the Essex Marshes. There she falls in love with simple, gentle Eric, the son of the rector's wife. But when their relationship is discovered, they are swiftly separated. So begins Sukey's quest to be reunited, a quest that will take her through every layer of Victorian society...

Sylvia Townsend Warner (1893-1978) grew up in rural Devonshire before moving to London and writing her debut novel, Lolly Willowes (1926). With her partner Valentine Ackland, she was active in the Communist Party and served in the Red Cross during the Spanish Civil War. Her novels include Mr Fortune's Maggot, The True Heart, Summer Will Show, After the Death of Don Juan, The Corner That Held Them and The Flint Anchor.

The kind of novelist who inspires an intense sense of ownership in her fans ... though entirely without sentimentality, her sympathies tended naturally to the marginal, the vulnerable, the exploited, the obscure -- Sarah Waters One of our most idiosyncratic, courageous and versatile writers -- Hermione Lee