the prose and ideas at the middle of this book are really beautifully contained and controlled. the tiny world that eliza and anne make feels so real and giddy and atmospheric, and it's written about beautifully. the book's a little busy when it's not focussing on that - i was skimming a lot of the stuff about school and the tiny details of boarding school life in the 1800s. interesting enough to someone, i'm sure, but a little light for me.

For start this review I need thank NetGalley and the publisher for the access to this ARC. This is a heartwarming story about the relationship between two girls. The book is beautiful written and I find the exploration of the relationship between friendship and love very interesting. I love how the author teach us about racism and real troubles that still today affect our societies. If I need describe this book it will be a perfect journey and storytelling of a relationship.

I would have appreciated knowing before I started reading, that the novel is based on fact and is the result of years (decades even) of research into the real lives of Anne Lister (of Gentleman Jack fame) and her first love, half Indian orphan Eliza Raine. Set in a boarding school in York, the daily rhythms and routines of meals and lessons are described impeccably, slowly building insight into the aspirations and expectations of respectable ladies at the turn of the nineteenth century. The two characters at the centre of the story are both part of the middle classes, and also outsiders, Eliza due to her ethnicity and Anne due to her sexuality/gender expression. Donoghue contrasts the girls’ response to finding themselves set apart, one wanting to keep as low a profile as possible, the other rebelling openly. Like Sarah Waters, Donoghue can make characters in a historical setting feel contemporary and relatable. I felt I learned a lot about the time period without being explicitly told. The book is a slow burn rather than a page turner, and for me didn’t pack the emotional punch of The Wonder, but it is one which Donoghue’s many fans will love.

A well researched book imagining Eliza Raine's story when at school with Anne Lister. Raine had an Indian mother and white English father and was born into a country marriage i.e. illegitimate so faced many problems went sent to England to school.
The book is between 3 and 4 stars for me, as the writing is magical and I felt like I was there at the time. However, it is so well researched there's a bit too much detail at times about school lessons and rules of games.

Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher and the author for a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for my free digital ARC!

It’s pretty much a given that if you hand me a queer historical fiction novel I am damn well going to enjoy it 😌 Everyone (I hope) at this point has heard of Anne Lister, Gentleman Jack, 19th-century lesbian extraordinaire, but there’s still not that much written about her (many) lovers. Emma Donoghue has sought to begin rectifying this with Learned by Heart, which focuses on Anne’s relationship with Eliza Raine while they were 14/15-year-old boarders at school.

Eliza Raine was a mixed-race Anglo-Indian girl, so I did feel a bit hesitant given that Donoghue, though a lesbian, is also white. But she’s done copious research and while the focus is mainly on the closed little bubble of her and Lister’s relationship at school, there is also good commentary on colonialism and the racism & homophobia of 19th-century Britain.

I’ve never read Donoghue before, but I immediately clicked with her writing style. The book is written with 19th-century cadences but it’s not overdone. It’s evocative and the scenes conjured are vivid. She’s also great at showcasing the intensity of teenage love. Eliza and Lister feel like they’re discovering everything for the first time, emotions are heightened, extravagant promises are made wildly and then not kept. While Lister is obviously iconic, she was also a bit of a player and left a lot of broken hearts in her wake. I loved how Donoghue also included the hints that Lister may have been non-binary but didn’t have the terminology for it, which was mentioned in one of my recent nonfiction reads Before We Were Trans - love a bit of serendipity like that!

Lister is just such an iconic figure in queer history and I’m glad for this beautiful new addition, meticulously researched, which also puts a spotlight on a queer woman of colour. I’d love for another book (or several!) which goes into more detail about Eliza’s life after school, which was unfortunately largely spent in an asylum.

Much of Eliza’s writings are lost as she would instruct Lister to burn her letters, but I’m just imagining the other brilliant works that could be written using her life as inspiration! I think I would have preferred it if Learned by Heart only focused on their school life, as there are a few letters interspersed from Eliza to Lister during her confinement as an adult, and I think they deserved more page-time than they got.

Out on the 24th August!

I received this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Based on the real lives of Eliza Raine and Anne Lister, this focusses primarily on their time room sharing at boarding school.

Thanks to her dark skin, Eliza is used to being the outcast among her peers. Until Anne Lister joins the class, that is. A natural outcast with her behaviours and attitude to rules and authority, Eliza finds herself drawn to Lister. Becoming roommates accelerates an inevitable friendship, which develops further.

Firstly, this was excellently researched. I find Anne Lister and her many cohorts fascinating and I really enjoy historic fiction when it’s done well. I think I would’ve liked more from the time after they leave the school. I understand focussing on the time spent getting to know one another and becoming lovers, but there seems to be a whole lot of interesting that comes after, when they’re away from the school. A little of that at the end would’ve rounded this out really well.

It’s told from the Eliza’s perspective at 14/15 so unsurprisingly, there’s a fair bit of filler about the inanity of school kids and their gossip/nitpicking/etc. as understandable as that is, as an adult reader, it does get a bit tedious.

Kind of spoiler:
Eliza and Lister’s age is a further issue when the two begin to physicalise their relationship. Given their ages, it’s somewhat uncomfortable as a reader.

Overall, it’s probably a 3.75 for me. I perhaps expected too much from it as a whole, but I just thought it could’ve been more. Definitely one to visit fans of Lister or sapphic historical fiction.

I enjoy pretty much anything by Emma Donoghue and this is no exception. The character of Anne Lister, gentleman Jack, fair leaps off the page and it would be difficult to see how Eliza could stop herself falling in love. The growing physical love between the girls is sensitively handled as is the failing mental health of Eliza. A lovely book all the better for being based on true characters.

Anyone who has seen the wonderful BBC series Gentleman Jack will know Anne Lister was well ahead of her time, a lesbian living life on her own terms and a real force to be reckoned with. This fictionalised account takes us back to Anne's younger days and is jam packed with historical detail, clearly so thoroughly researched. This is a book to really get your teeth into, it's so densely written, and enjoyable. I would recommend this for an autumn read, cosied up, then watching Gentleman Jack after!

Learned by Heart by Emma Donoghue is a well researched and accomplished historical novel that brings the characters to life through a reimagining.

I liked this, but didn‘t love it. It‘s based on the true story of Anne Lister (Gentleman Jack) meeting Eliza Raine at a girls‘ boarding school in the early 1800s.

There are two timelines as Eliza looks back to 10 years ago when they met at school and fell in love, and whilst I liked the school part I felt there was too much unexplained in the intervening years up to the situation that Eliza found herself in.

3.5 stars

A beautifully written story, based on the early lives of Eliza Raine and Anne Lister, who met at school in the early 19th century. It is clear that, although this is a work of fiction, Emma Donoghue has meticulously researched these historical characters and their lives.

Homophobia, race, class, illegitimacy and mental health are explored sensitively throughout the story and the characters are well developed.

I struggled with the pace, finding it slow and repetitive at times, however overall a recommended read.

4 star. Thanks to Netgalley, Pan Macmillan and Emma Donoghue for an ARC in return for my honest review.

I’ve read several books by Emma Donohughue before so knew I was in safe hands with her latest, Learned By Heart. What stays with me most after reading a book by this author is the many layers that she embeds in her stories. This is the story of Anne Lister and her first love, Eliza Raine, while at a boarding school in York.. But really it’s also about belonging, becoming a woman, challenging authority and society, friendship, otherness, and empathy. The writing is rich and feels of the historical period and the story of the young love is punctuated with letters written several years later that add a page-turning element to an otherwise slow burning unfolding of youth and friendship and finding yourself, and of course love. There is quite a lot of content about Anne Lister now, so this wasn’t a big draw for me here. But I was really pleased with the direction taken in telling the story from Eliza’s perspective. Whilst Anne is in a starrring role, our heroine is a complex and interesting character in her own right.

*Rated 5 stars on Storygraph*

Thanks to NetGalley and the author for access to this title. All opinions expressed are my own.

I picked up this book knowing that this was a perfect marriage of an incredible writer and a super interesting storyline, having been interested in Lister for a while now (since watching Gentleman Jack). This book definitely lived up to my expectations.

I was immediately enamoured by the writing and found it a super approachable book - it was a great combination of a fast read (because I just adored reading it) and a slow read (because I wanted to pause to take in the writing). You can see the amount of research put into this novel.

I can't wait to tell all of my friends to read this book and to be able to discuss the book in depth upon it's release.

'Eliza finds herself thinking again that school is not a rehearsal for life's play. Not for Hetty, nor for Eliza and Lister, nor any of them. It's the first act of the piece, performed once only. It comes to Eliza that she'll be reliving these brief days for the rest of her life.'

Learned By Heart is a historical novel about the girlhood of Anne Lister; and that's what will sell it. But it's also a reflection on spending your life in various kinds of institution, and is especially invested in exploring the experience of being in an elite girls' boarding school in York in the early years of the nineteenth century. The narrator is fourteen-year-old Eliza Raine, who Donoghue presents as the product of what was then called a 'country marriage', with an Indian mother and white British father; she came to England at the age of six and has lived under the guardianship of a benevolent uncle ever since. Eliza is known to have been Lister's first lover, but her own story has been somewhat obscured. As we learn early on in the novel via letters from an older Eliza, she entered a mental asylum in her early twenties; she was to spend most of 'the rest of her life' there or in other places like it.

Of all Donoghue's accomplished historical fiction, Learned By Heart is set most solidly in her comfort zone. Donoghue has a PhD in eighteenth-century fiction, and has published academic articles on Anne Lister and other lesbian and female writers; her book Passions Between Women: British Lesbian Culture 1668–1801 was published in 1993. And it shows: I don't think I've ever read a modern historical novel that so vividly brings very early nineteenth-century England to life. I don't particularly care about accuracy in historical fiction but Donoghue demonstrates just how vivid and versatile novels set in the past can be when you really know your stuff, deftly negotiating issues of language (Lister wishes there was a word for 'past-sick', unfamiliar with 'nostalgia'), colonialism (Eliza is proud of the East India Company 'the most powerful firm the world's ever known', self-identifying as 'born into it'), and homosexuality, something that Eliza and Lister see as solely male and defined by illegal sexual acts between men. She makes her characters forward-thinking - Eliza because of her own mixed heritage and precarious social position as an illegitimate child, Lister because of her insatiable curiosity - but not anachronistically enlightened, especially given their limited access to information as teenage girls.

I'm not a big reader of romance, and struggle even with literary historical fiction, like this, where the central plotline is focused on a romantic relationship. This wasn't helped here by the imbalance between Eliza and Lister. Both are beautifully, thoughtfully brought to life, but we get to see Lister totally through Eliza's eyes, which makes her a much more vivid creation. Obviously, she was an 'original' in a way that Donoghue's Eliza is not, and her eccentricity and singularity are bound to draw the reader's attention. But I wished we could have got even a glimpse of how Eliza seemed to Lister. I found myself more convinced and moved by the waning of the relationship between them, especially in Eliza's final letter, than in its build-up and consummation. Because of this, though, I was relieved that Donoghue uses Eliza and Lister to tell us something about constrained girlhoods as well as about lesbianism. Their classmates, the 'Middles', are lovingly individualised, and you really get the sense of what it was to look out at the outside world, as a girl, from this kind of place - trying to glean what might be happening elsewhere, while understandably consumed by the life of the school. This matters, Donoghue is saying, as she lets us experience the significance of brief bursts of freedom at the theatre, the local fair, or an illicit escapade to the Assembly Rooms. And indeed for Eliza - and for two of her classmates who don't live past twenty - this wasn't just the first act, it was pretty much the whole thing.

Learned by Heart by Emma Donoghue
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 4.25 stars
Publication date: 24 August 2023
Thank you to NetGalley and Pan Macmillan for providing me with an e-copy of this book in exchange for an honest review
~~~~~
Learned by Heart is the long-buried love story of Eliza Raine, an orphan heiress banished from India to England at age six, and Anne Lister, a brilliant, troublesome tomboy, who meet at the Manor School for young ladies in York in 1805 when they are both fourteen.
~~~~~
I approached this book cautiously as I've not had the best success with Donoghue's The Pull of the Stars and Akin, but she is an author who I want to enjoy. And I'm happy to report that the third time was the charm; I really enjoyed this book. First of all, I loved the dual timeline and the epistolary aspect of some of the story.
The author's notes clearly show Donoghue's passion for Anne Lister (epic diarist a.k.a. "Gentleman Jack") and the thorough research she has done, and I found it very interesting that she decided to show Anne through the eyes of Eliza, who's a fascinating character in her own right. This is a very slow, very quiet story; there is not a lot of plot and I wouldn't call it propulsive, but I appreciated the character study, the gentle evolution of Anne and Eliza's relationship, the exploration of the attitudes to race and women at the time and the daily life of the pupils at the Manor School.
~~~~~

When Anne Lister joins a girls’ boarding school in York, she makes fast friends with Eliza Raine. Emma Donoghue tells Lister and Raine’s love story in the form of a narrative from their school days punctuated by a series of letters from Raine to Lister ten years later. Painstakingly researched and intricately written, this historical novel is both beautiful and insightful. For fans of the BBC Gentleman Jack series, LGBT and/or historical novels.

Learned By Heart is a historical novel about Eliza Raine and her relationship with Anne Lister, when they were teenagers. Both characters I knew nothing about until I read this.
Initially Eliza, who is use to living in solitude, is less than impressed that she has to share her bedroom with the new and rebellious whirlwind of a pupil who tests all the boundaries that Eliza has worked so diligently to respect. She later becomes infatuated with her and their love affair and her all consuming love for Lister ultimately destroys Eliza who ends up in an asylum.

I found there to be quite a few school girl characters to distinguish between, which at first was a bit confusing. It’s also not a page turning thriller but more of a captivating, absorbing read that details their time in the school. The book is so well written that you become immersed and can clearly envisage their lives, the dreary and cold living conditions and their education at Manor House School.

Quite simply, a stunning read. Thanks to NetGalley and Pan Macmillan, Picador for access to an advanced copy.

This is a lovely and tragic telling of Anne Lister's school friend and their imagined relationship at school in nineteenth century England. It might sound dull but Emma Donoghue brings the whole story and period to vivid life with the tender friendship between the girls developing and having consequences into their adult lives.

The characters are so lively and Anne Lister is a loveable rogue even at 15 and even when she behaves badly, this is lively telling of a true story and leaves you wanting more from the author and from Anne and Eliza.

Emma Donoghue is one of my favourite writers of historical fiction and this one certainly doesn't disappoint. Set in York during the early 19th century, it tells the story of Eliza, an orphan from India who is now boarding at a school in the city. During the year that follows, she shares a room with Anne Lister and a deep relationship follows. Emma Donoghue is an absolute master of creating very real characters in a wholly believable setting and, although she obviously researches it all very deeply, she shows this with a very light touch. The background is given so everything is in context but the characters never give us this background with artificial dialogue - we know the Napoleonic wars are going on, the characters talk of them and feel fear of the threat of invasion but the dialogue about it feels natural and doesn't labour the point. The characters of Eliza and Anne are very well drawn and the passionate friendships and relationships of young girls is also well done but everyone is flawed to an extent and as a result, they feel real. Anne Lister, especially, really comes to life and is shown to be an extraordinary person all the more because of the times she is living in. I was amazed at the author's note at the end of the book to read how much was based on the true story and that absolutely added to it - I'm glad I only found out at the end though as the surprise was all the more. Emma Donoghue, in the note, says how long this book has been developing in her head and it shows, everything is so well thought through and beautifully put together.

Thanks to NetGalley for the copy in return for an honest review.
#LearnedByHeart #NetGalley

Engaging account of ‘Gentleman Jack’s’ schooldays. Too much research overkills it.

For the most part, Donoghue’s account of Anne Lister’s sojourn, aged 14, as a boarding pupil at the Manor School, York in 1805 is well written and engaging.

Lister embarked on a relationship with another girl Eliza Raine, whose background was quite complex. Raine and her older sister Jane were orphans, but came from a fairly wealthy background. Their father had been a high ranking official in the East India Company. Their mother was an Indian lady. Eliza suffered the slur of both hidden illegitimacy and her obvious mixed race heritage. The cultural mores of colonialism were rife, ubiquitous and generally unquestioned

Donoghue’s book shifts between the meeting and developing relationship between the two girls, and a series of unanswered letters, sent by Raine to Lister in 1815, where we learn more about what happened to her, and a little more about Lister too. Who actually comes across even more than she did in ‘Gentleman Jack’ as less than admirable, cavalier towards those who fell for her, and with a keen eye on the money.

The reason I liked, but did not love this book, is that Donoghue’s prodigious research into the general history of the time, and its social history, is overdone. So, for example, there’s a scene where, to keep warm, the girls ask permission to play games. We then get detailed description of each of the informal schoolyard games – and there are many of these – which are played. Donoghue clearly loves her excellent research, but too much displaying of every bit of this ends up detracting from narrative drive. Less would certainly have been more.