Vorab-RezensentenMary Hoban

Julia Sorell was a spit-fire. Then her marriage to the ecclesiastical Tom Arnold in 1850 propelled her into one of the most eminent intellectual families of Victorian England, a circle that included Lewis Carroll and George Eliot. Her eldest daughter, Mary Humphrey Ward, became a bestselling novelist and staunch suffragette—and her grandchildren included Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World, and the evolutionary biologist Julian Huxley. With these connections, Julia is a mostly silent presence in many famously documented lives. Yet peeling back that silenced presence, beyond her marriage and motherhood, her story is that of an extraordinary woman, a paradox who defied convention as much as she embraced it. Julia's marriage, born of desire, soon became riven by discord. Tom’s sudden decision to convert to Catholicism and Julia’s refusal to convert with him (quite the opposite, actually—she threw rocks at his new church, instead) plunged their lives into a crisis. Their great love was pitted against profoundly different understandings of marriage and religion—and it all played out during a time in which science challenged religion, democracy challenged aristocracy, and women began organizing to challenge men. Told with the pace, depth, and psychological richness of a great novel, An Unconventional Wife: The Life of Julia Sorell Arnold (Scribe Publications, January 2020) is a riveting biography of an extraordinary—yet also ordinary—woman, whose portrait reveals an intimate, everyday experience of an important social turning point in history.