Eliza

Eliza Raine (1791 – 1860) attended the Manor School in York along with the now-famous Anne Lister. She was born in India (to a prosperous surgeon from Yorkshire and his Indian mistress) and moved to England at the age of six – without her parents, both of whom died soon after. She became a patient at Clifton House asylum while in her twenties, and remained institutionalized for the rest of her life. As the “Author’s Note” explains, her history is “full of gaps and puzzles,” and the novel’s task is to speculatively fill in those gaps and solve the puzzles (309). Donoghue works with real information (concerning Raine’s family, friends and guardians; her relationship with Lister; and the decline of her mental health) in order to paint a picture of what life might have been like for this tragic heiress. The novel alternates between scenes from her teenage years – navigating...