May and Amy
A True Story of Family, Forbidden Love, and the Secret Lives of May Gaskell, Her Daughter Amy, and Sir Edward Burne-Jones
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
A chance encounter at a summer party sent writer Josceline Dimbleby on a quest to uncover a mystery in her family’s past. After talking with Andrew Lloyd Webber about a beautiful, dark portrait in his art collection, she decided to find out more about the subject of the painting: her great-aunt Amy Gaskell. Dimbleby had always known her great-aunt’s face from this haunted portrait by the well-known Pre-Raphaelite painter Sir Edward Burne-Jones, but beyond that and a family rumor that Amy had died young “of a broken heart,” Dimbleby knew little of her female forebears.
At the start of her search, Josceline came across a cache of unpublished letters from Burne-Jones to her great-grandmother May Gaskell, Amy’s mother. These letters turned out to be part of a passionate correspondence—adoring, intimate, sometimes up to five letters a day—which continued throughout the last six years of the painter’s life. As she read, more and more questions arose: Why did Burne-Jones feel he had to protect May from an overwhelming sadness? What was the deep secret she had confided to him? And what was the tragic truth behind Amy’s wayward, wandering life, her strange marriage, and her unexplained early death?
In piecing together the eventful life of her grandmother, Dimbleby takes us through a turbulent period in history that includes the Boer War, the Great War, and the Second World War and visits the most far-flung corners of the British Empire. The Souls—William Morris, Rudyard Kipling, and William Gladstone—all play a part in this sweeping, often funny, and sometimes tragic story. Above all, it is her infectious enthusiasm for a subject so close to home that makes May and Amy such a compelling and richly entertaining read.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The Victorian era's convoluted romances are famously entertaining: men and women, married (but not to each other), exchanging passionate letters and whispering endearments yet frequently remaining virtuous in their actions. May Gaskell, a proper British society woman at the turn of the 20th century, was no stranger to these fervent friendships. For six years, the unhappily married Gaskell corresponded romantically with Edward Burne-Jones, the pre-Raphaelite artist. Each promised to destroy the other's letters, but Gaskell, comforted by rereading them, preserved hers for "those who come after." These letters as well as period novels, Burne-Jones's paintings and family photographs reveal Gaskell family secrets and tragedies, including the strange death of Gaskell's daughter Amy ("all anyone seemed to have been told was that she had died young, 'of a broken heart' "). Cookbook author and food columnist Dimbleby became obsessed with unraveling the mysteries of May (her great-grandmother) and Amy, and she successfully draws readers into her dramatic search. The facts of daily late-Victorian life are captivating enough, but add to this Gaskell's circle of friends including Henry James and Rudyard Kipling and the intrigues surrounding Amy's love life (her younger sister married a man who pined for Amy), and this family memoir is riveting. Photos, drawings.
