The North American rights to Laura's historical novel, The Swan's Nest, have been acquired by Algonquin
Thanks to the meticulous travel planning, fearless foreign driving, and all-around adaptability of Tom, Laura was able to complete her research for a novel that recounts the courtship and honeymoon of 19th-century poets Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett. Thanks to Tom's steadfast support, constant encouragement, and romantic temperament, she was able to work nonstop on the project from July of 2016 to the present (and beyond). For a description of the novel and a list of the places Tom and Laura went to gather facts and inspiration, see below.
THE SWAN'S NEST
On January 10, 1845, a struggling English poet named Robert Browning wrote a letter to a hugely popular and famously reclusive invalid whose face he’d never seen. “I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett,” he wrote, “and I love you too.” For the next five months, they corresponded about poetry, she always insisting that he could not possibly love her. When they met at last, in a room she had hardly left in five years, he wrote immediately to propose, but she refused. On September 12, 1846, a date that is still celebrated in London as Browning Sunday, they married in secret, with none of her family present, and left, as her doctor had long recommended, for the life-giving air of Italy. Elizabeth Barrett, the eldest of 12 children in an intensely loving, wealthy, well-educated family, was disinherited, and her father never spoke to her again. Robert Browning had to borrow £100—one-third of his father’s salary--for the arduous steamboat, train, and carriage trip across the English Channel, France, and the Mediterranean Sea.
On January 10, 1845, a struggling English poet named Robert Browning wrote a letter to a hugely popular and famously reclusive invalid whose face he’d never seen. “I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett,” he wrote, “and I love you too.” For the next five months, they corresponded about poetry, she always insisting that he could not possibly love her. When they met at last, in a room she had hardly left in five years, he wrote immediately to propose, but she refused. On September 12, 1846, a date that is still celebrated in London as Browning Sunday, they married in secret, with none of her family present, and left, as her doctor had long recommended, for the life-giving air of Italy. Elizabeth Barrett, the eldest of 12 children in an intensely loving, wealthy, well-educated family, was disinherited, and her father never spoke to her again. Robert Browning had to borrow £100—one-third of his father’s salary--for the arduous steamboat, train, and carriage trip across the English Channel, France, and the Mediterranean Sea.
London, Torquay, Le Havre, Paris, Rouen, Bourges, Lyon, Avignon, Vaucluse, Marseilles, Pisa, Florence, Rome, Siena, Asolo, Venice, and Jamaica