The Wayward Muse: A Novel

(Paperback)

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Description

"I apologize again for my boldness, but I must tell you that you're the most beautiful girl in Oxford. Maybe in all of England. I have to put you in my painting."

With these words, the scandalous, wildly talented painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti changes seventeen-year-old Jane Burden's life forever. Jane's gaunt, awkward figure and grave expression have cemented her reputation as the ugliest girl in Oxford. Raised by a stableman on Holywell Street -- the town's most sordid and despicable slum -- Jane is nearly resigned to marry in-kind. But when she meets Rossetti at the theater, he sees beyond her worn, ill-fitting dress and unruly hair and is stirred by her unconventional beauty. The charismatic painter whisks Jane into Oxford's exclusive art scene as his muse, and during the long and intimate hours of modeling -- draping and tilting, gazing and posing -- Jane finds herself falling in love.

When Rossetti abruptly leaves Oxford with no plans to return, brokenhearted Jane settles for a stable, if passionless, marriage to his soft-spoken protg, William Morris -- the man who would go on to become the father of the British Arts and Crafts Movement. Jane resigns herself to life as a respectable wife and mother, exchanging the slop bucket for intricate needlepoint, willing away the memories of Rossetti and what could have been.

But Rossetti and Jane are inextricably bound together by tragedy, art, and desire, and no amount of time or distance can separate them. Ultimately this complicated arrangement with which Jane, Morris, and Rossetti must learn to live threatens to undo them all. Richly textured and deftly portrayed, Elizabeth Hickey's latest is a compelling portrait of the ever-changing notions of both love and beauty.

Reviews

"In The Wayward Muse, Elizabeth Hickey conjures up the fascinating love story behind an artist's vision and brings it to life with richly imagined characters and historical detail. It is an enchanting novel."

-- Tova Mirvis, author of The Ladies Auxiliary and The Outside World
"I will never again encounter a William Morris design or read a poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti in quite the same way. Elizabeth Hickey's rendering of the Pre-Raphaelite movement in English poetry and art is evocative and enchanting. Jane Burden is a heroine worthy of the Bront sisters."

-- Brenda Rickman Vantrease, author of The Illuminator and The Mercy Seller
"The Wayward Muse grants us and its protagonist, the plainest Jane from an Oxford slum, a shared dream: to be transported out of ourselves. With sumptuous and persuasive detail, the novel unveils for us the intoxications and burdens of always being someone's muse."

-- Jim Shepard, author of Project X and Love and Hydrogen

Author Bio

Elizabeth Hickey is the author of The Painted Kiss. She earned an MFA from Columbia University and lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and son.