Emma Donoghue is an auto-buy author for me and *Learned by Heart* is yet another proof of why. I especially love when her stories have a historical setting and the early nineteenth century is a period in which she excels. This time, the reader gets to spend time with historic lesbians against the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars.

The famous Ann Lister is fictionalized in this narrative, but she is not the main character. Instead, we experience her through the eyes of Eliza Raine, Lister’s first love. Lister is fascinating as a historical figure and a fictionalized character, but I’m glad Donoghue chose to focus on a lesser-known historical lesbian, especially one who is usually only discussed as a footnote in Lister’s history (Listory?). Eliza Raine doesn’t even have her own Wikipedia page. If you Google her, the first several results are for a romatasy author with the same name or pseudonym. Learned by Heart finally gives Raine the spotlight.

Raine and Lister’s story rings so true for teenage first love. Raine’s shyness and Lister’s over-confidence took me back to my own middle and high school experiences. Their relationship felt tender at times and adversarial at others.

I’m continually impressed by Emma Donoghue’s talent for spinning a beautiful and emotionally weighty story out of something which at first glance seems like a one-sentence C-plot. Raine and Lister, but especially Raine, have amazing depth and compelling character development for only 300 pages. There are no extraneous words in the writing, but it’s by no means a spare writing style.

Emma Donoghue has a knack for taking lesser-known historical stories and shining a spotlight on them. In this novel we meet lonely 14 year old Eliza Raine, who becomes enthralled with the new girl in her boarding school, Anne Lister. Ms Lister is historically famous for her frank and detailed diaries, which led to her being dubbed "the first modern lesbian". She wrote extensively about her relationships, from school days onwards, and it is one such relationship, with the young Ms Raine which forms the basis of ":Learned by Heart".
Told from Eliza's point of view, it is an intimate look at the struggles of a young woman who faces mockery for her mixed-race heritage, and who has moved from another country and is now here with only an older sister. Add to this the confusion of her growing feelings for her roommate, Anne, and it is an often heart-breaking read about finding one's way in the world, first love and the aftermath of such huge personal events.

I am a big fan of Emma Donoghue, The Pull of the Stars is one of my favourite books and I loved The Wonder. Learned by Heart did not reach those same heights for me. It is the love story of two teenage girls in 1805. Eliza is an orphan, daughter of an Indian mother and Anne Lister. It's a fictionalised version of their relationship.

Clearly amazingly researched, it is very much focused on their romance and relationship and their interactions. I was expecting something more akin to her previous books. Overall I found it a bit slow and I just couldn't really get into the story and found myself not wanting to read. Sad to say, not for me. But I'll absolutely read whatever Emma Donoghue writes next.

I don't think I'm going to be finishing this one. It's not that it's bad, it's just that I cannot for the life of me get into it. When a book is a slog to come back to, I don't consider it worth carrying on with.

I loved Room, but every other Emma Donoghue since then hasn't been it for me and I may be ready to stop trying.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC.

I’ve read several of Emma Donoghue’s books now and she never disappoints. Like many of her other novels, ‘Learned by Heart’ is full of the richly evocative historical detail and captures characters and relationships with care and authenticity. This book explores an earlier period in Anne Lister’s life from the perspective of her first love, Eliza Raine, when both were teenagers at a school for girls. The passion of first love is richly drawn and the dual time perspective allows Donoghue to conjure up the intensity of the blossoming love affair, juxtaposed with its aftermath and its impact on her life as Eliza is remembering their relationship.

When misfit Eliza Raine meets spirited Anne Lister they forge a close friendship and eventually fall in love. Many readers will know about Anne Lister, the inspiration for Gentleman Jack, but not of Eliza. I think Emma Donoghue writes beautifully about forbidden love, constraints on women and the ultimate inevitability of Lister's betrayal. Sad and poignant.

I wasn’t getting on with the book from Netgalley so I requested the audio thinking one or the other or both might increase my enjoyment after all, I do so like this authors books.

It’s very well researched and so informative but I have to be honest, it was so slow I got easily bored then distracted.

I did plough through though (which was easier using audio at high speed)

This one wasn’t for me personally, some have liked this well enough though so don’t let me put you off.

Another slow burning but powerful story by Emma Donoghue. A frustrating, intense love story about 2 teenage girls who find themselves in each other with a love that is all encompassing but as most teenage loves do it fizzles sadly.
I did enjoy this one but struggled with the way the girls spoke to each other, not the intensity but the language, it felt too grown up for them. I also didn't really gel with the historical setting of this one, i didn't see why this specific period of time was chosen for this story as it seemed to have no relevance to the plot.

I read this ARC for an honest review
All thoughts and opinions are mine

I wanted to read this for 2 reasons
Love the author and the other books of hers I've read
Also, I am familiar with Anne Lister - there is a TV series in the UK called Gentleman Jack which is about her and her adventures

I really enjoyed this
Wonderfully researched and there are is a lot to discover about Lister from her diaries to the buildings she inhabited in her lifetime which means there is a lot of material available to discover and used

I found this a wonderful, emotive read

I am a huge fan of Emma Donoghue so was excited to be approved for an ARC through Netgalley. Learned by heart is inspired by the love story between Anne Lister and Eliza Raine who meet at a boarding school in York. It is an emotional and heart-breaking read which will stay with me.

Emma Donoghue seems to be a kind of hit or meh for me. I either love her novels immensely or I'm just a bit bored by them. I loved "Haven" last, I was underwhelmed by "Learned By Heart". Unfortunately I just didn't see the necessity of it somehow. While it is written very well, without a doubt, I can only suppose, that basically all the choices the author made about how to tell this story, did not work for me. I did not relate to any of the characters, the pacing (if there was pacing?) seemd uneven, the setting did not come of the page for me. So this is not to say that this is a bad book. I just didn't vibe with it and thought it was middling at best.
I will, however, read anything that Emma Donoghue will put out, because I've loved other books by her so much.
Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing a review copy.

I'm a bit mixed as to how I feel about this book. I enjoyed it but am still a little unsure. The story of the two lovers torn apart was really sad but they were only young. A tragedy that we must remember is also true.

This is a beautiful love story, sensitively told, about childhood friends, Anne and Eliza, who fall in love following their first meeting at boarding school. Their relationship is so wonderfully and tenderly described, the love they have for one another pours off the page. At a time where same sex relationships were frowned upon by society, Anne and Eliza's connection was so strong that they had no choice but to surrender to it.
Beautiful, emotional, evocative.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for giving me a free advanced copy of this book to read and review.

Set in the Regency England of Jane Austen and Bridgerton, Learned by Heart combines Emma Donoghue's gift for telling a story with her zeal for re-creating historical settings with pinpoint accuracy to great effect.

It tells the fictionalised tale of prominent 19th century diarist Anne Lister as an adolescent, and of her first great love, her boarding school roommate Eliza Raine. Eliza, from whose perspective the story is told, was the daughter of an English East India Company surgeon and his Indian 'country wife', brought to England as a young girl upon her father's death. In Donoghue's imagining, Eliza feels abandoned and disconnected from her peers until a fearless, daring girl calling herself Lister arrives at her York boarding school and changes Eliza's life forever.

Anne Lister was a noted diarist, whose journals - spanning more than thirty years and three times the length of Samuel Pepys' - shed light on life as a member of the landed gentry in early 19th century Yorkshire. More famously, her graphic descriptions of her relationships with other women (beginning with Eliza Raine, and written in a code only deciphered years after her death) led to her being proclaimed 'the first modern lesbian'.
I must confess to being ignorant of Anne Lister's story prior to reading Learned by Heart, and I initially thought that it was purely a work of historical fiction. That Donoghue has been able to take the little that is known about Lister's adolescence - she was yet to begin writing her diary at this point - and craft such a believable story, which is both meticulously staged in its specific setting and faithful to contemporary accounts of both women's characters, is truly impressive. It also speaks to the time the author spent researching her subject and setting, and the fervent commitment of generations of amateur code breakers who devoted themselves to deciphering Lister's diary and the letters exchanged by Lister and Raine.

Writings from the time portray Lister as a fiercely intelligent, outspoken woman, and Donoghue brings her teenage incarnation to life vividly. Lister is witty, sharp, outrageous and utterly herself; it is not difficult to see how the young, insecure Raine might have fallen under her spell, making the love story utterly believable and Raine's lingering feelings years later totally understandable. Donoghue also takes the fascinating, tragic story of Eliza Raine and embues it with life and heart as she gives Eliza the opportunity to tell her own story that was denied her in real life.

Like Lister's real-life diaries, the novel evokes the minutiae of early 19th century life - the hairstyles, the style of dress, the games - as well as noting the broader facts of life at the time, such as high child mortality rates and fear of Napoleonic invasion. Donoghue is a master of world-building, as she demonstrated in her best-selling 2010 novel Room, so I was unsurprised by how effectively she portrays the Manor School as both the girls' prison and their sanctuary, drawing upon details such as the draconian system of punishments, the idiosyncrasies of both students and teachers, and the lessons - which largely consist of the rote learning which gives the novel its title.

The Manor School nominally aims to educate the young ladies it accommodates, but its proprietors are more preoccupied with teaching the girls to be dignified, ladylike and agreeable, so that they might make good marriages upon their graduation. Nevertheless, within its walls, Lister and Raine's relationship can be nurtured (albeit secretly), Lister is relatively free to shrug off the stifling gender norms of the time, and Raine is protected from the realities of life in high society as a mixed-race, illegitimate woman. I was reminded of Susan Coolidge's 1873 novel What Katy Did at School, which similarly tells how boarding school can be a place of freedom, where girls can challenge their preconceptions and learn more about themselves, even as they are compelled to adhere to a rigid set of rules with regard to their comportment.

The narrative of the year in the Slope (the nickname the girls give to their shared attic room) is intercut with extracts from letters Eliza sent to Lister while confined in an asylum, so even readers without prior knowledge of the women's real-life relationship must follow the story of their love affair with the knowledge of the inevitable unhappy ending looming over their time together.

When executed poorly, sex scenes can pull the reader right out of the book and thoroughly undermine the work that has been done to establish the connection between characters, but Donoghue treats the relationship between Raine and Lister with respect and tenderness, allowing Raine's awestruck awakening to speak for itself. It is a shame that we know from the outset that the relationship does not last, as it adds an unwelcome layer of doubt and cynicism which prevented me from fully investing in their love.

The only aspect of the book which prevented me from awarding it five stars is the ending, which felt somewhat rushed and under-explained for readers who do not already know much of Lister's later life and relationships.

Finally, Donoghue's research is impeccable, but I must highlight my favourite detail. 'With this diamond I cut this glass, with this face I kissed a lass,' the quote attributed to Lister in the novel, was discovered by Donoghue during a tour of the building that once housed the Manor School and so could - possibly - have really been etched by one of our protagonists.

Thank you to NetGalley and Pan Macmillan for the opportunity to read and review an ARC of this book.

as a big fan of donoghue and historical fiction focusing on sapphic dynamics i was very much hyped for learned by heart. sadly, i found the author's style here more contrived than her normal one and i never felt immersed by the story.

This historical queer romance focuses on the character of Gentleman Jack, a real "modern lesbian" who decided to live her life the way she wanted. But seeing her teenage years is quite unusual and a different point of view, centered on her relationship with classmates and teachers.

Emma Donoghue is one of my favourite authors, so it isn’t a huge surprise that I enjoyed this one. (And I am thrilled to have gotten early access to another one of her books).

This is similar to Donoghue’s other historical fiction in that she’s weaved together a story from fragmented historical records and lovingly fleshes out the people involved. It is an appetising mixture of fact and fiction, and I always enjoy reading her author’s notes as much as the story itself.

It took me a while to really get into this one (Lister is a complicated and at times off-putting character…), but as Eliza Raine and Lister grow closer, the story blooms into a beautiful albeit tragic love story.

Emma Donoghue puts her own spin on another area of history, this time examining Anne Lister and her first romantic relationship with schoolmate Eliza Raine.

As usual, Donoghue paints a perfect picture, richly bringing to life an aspect of historical life I knew very little about. You can tell this is well researched, as the characters, really jump from the page as they tackle with social issues still relevant today. I really enjoy the way Donoghue writes - they have such a talent at creating multifaceted, well developed characters regardless of the setting.

However, I did find the pacing of this to be very slow. It's predominantly a character study of Anne and Eliza and their journey to discovering themselves in a time that did not allow women any kind of freedom. While their relationship is fraught with troubles, it develops tenderly and in a way that felt natural until ultimately fate catches up with them. I particularly liked their dynamic. Eliza is mixed race, lonely, when she first meets boisterous Anne. There's a power dynamic I don't see much in sapphic novels between the two, and the push and pull between them was interesting to see play out.

Another great story from Emma Donoghue. She always comes out with the most interesting concepts.

Emma Donoghue has written another fascinating historic novel. This one is set in the early 19th century. It is based on the diaries of Ann Lister but is narrated predominately from the view of her Manor School roommate Eliza Raine. A secret relationship develops between the two teenage girls.
Emma Donoghue's research is as always very thorough and she paints a vivid image of Pre-Victorian England. The novel is a little slow in the beginning but picks up in the second half. As in her previous books the writing style is excellent.

Thanks so much to Netgalley and PanMacmillan for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.