Bloomsbury Girls
England 1950. As London reasserts its position at the heart of the English-speaking publishing world, the male establishment that regulates the business of selling books in Britain comes under attack. Enter the Bloomsbury Girls. Vivian, Grace, and Evie are women of intelligence, ingenuity, and pluck, yet their gender prevents them from assuming a leading role in bibliophile circles. Although Vivian possesses an intuitive insight into the modern literary scene, she is denied permanent promotion to Head of Fiction at Bloomsbury Books, where she works alongside Grace and Evie. Evie is a disappointed Girton College graduate, passed over for a fellowship because her tutor prefers a male student. And although Grace has been her family’s breadwinner since her husband’s nervous breakdown, he refuses to treat her with respect. Can there be a cure-all for this progressive trio? As the friends open the doors of the shop to the mid-century cultural scene, a new type of customer—the literary celebrity—comes to call. Daphne Du Maurier, Ellen Doubleday, Samuel Beckett, and other notables expose Vivian, Grace, and Evie to new influences and hitherto unimagined possibilities.
Admirers of Jenner’s debut novel, The Jane Austen Society, will be delighted to reconnect with Evie, whose scholarly intuition helped save Chawton House. Another discovery of equal academic importance, combined with an act of ingenious salesmanship, enables the threesome to save Bloomsbury Books, as well. In the process, the women discover that in addition to deriving a sense of professional fulfilment from their work, they enjoy the forging of personal connections beyond the boundaries of gender, race, and class. A modern fairy tale for lovers of bookshops and of course, books.
