Nell Stevens
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THE ORIGINAL, coming 2025. BRIEFLY, A DELICIOUS LIFE. Account not in use.
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Articles by Nell Stevens
Original und Fälschung in der Kunst: Wir sind leicht zu täuschen
Vor vielen Jahren traf ich in einem Pub in Bloomsbury in London einen Mann, der sagte, er arbeite im British Museum. Er erzählte mir, dass jedes einzelne Ausstellungsstück im Museum ein Replikat sei, und dass alle Originale aus Konservierungsgründen im Depot lagerten. Ich widersprach ihm entsetzt. Es könne doch nicht sein, dass die Millionen Besucher*innen des British Museum anstelle der realen Schätze der Menschheitsgeschichte nur oberflächliche Simulakren erlebten.
Why a Nineteenth-Century Scandal of Class and Identity Still Speaks to Us
In 1865, a British man who was working as a butcher in Wagga Wagga, Australia, contacted a wealthy English family to announce himself as their long-lost heir. Roger Tichborne, an aristocrat, had been presumed drowned after a shipwreck in 1854, though his mother refused to accept his death and spent years searching for him, sending letters to far-flung corners of the world, placing adverts in international papers.
What if every artwork you’ve ever seen is a fake?
Many years ago, I met a man in a pub in Bloomsbury who said he worked at the British Museum. He told me that every single item on display in the museum was a replica, and that all the original artefacts were locked away in storage for preservation. I was shocked and challenged him. It surely could not be the case that millions of annual visitors to the British Museum were encountering and experiencing not tangible, concrete treasures of human history, but the shallow simulacra of replicas.
Long-missing man turns family's life upside-down in 'The Original'
The title of "The Original" refers to: A. The painting its heroine, Grace, copies. B. Grace's cousin, Charles, who disappears and then (allegedly) returns, more than a decade later. C. The idea that we are all constantly changing and that trying to revert to a previous version of ourselves dooms us to failure. I'm sure there are more interpretations of that title in Nell Stevens' ("Briefly, a Delicious Life") tricky novel.
Five works of historical fiction to read this summer
Dorothy’s Auntie Em, a traumatized Civil War veteran and a shy artist with a secret are some of the wonderful characters in this summer’s noteworthy historical novels. These creative tales reimagine historical and literary moments, adding new dimensions, pondering, “What if?” By Hazel Gaynor Who was Auntie Em before her unforgettable appearance in L. Frank Baum’s “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”? Gaynor envisions the iconic character’s adolescence and married life in this creative novel.
Summary and Reviews of The Original by Nell Stevens
Book Summary In a grand English country house in 1899, an aspiring art forger must unravel whether the man claiming to be her long-lost cousin is an impostor. Brought to her uncle's decaying Oxfordshire estate when she was a child, Grace has grown up on the periphery of a once-great household, an outsider in her own home. Now a self-possessed and secretive young woman, she has developed unusual predilections: for painting, particularly forgery; for deception; for other girls.
Advance reader reviews of The Original
Summary | Excerpt | Reading Guide | Reviews | Beyond the book | Read-Alikes | Genres & Themes | Author Bio The Original A Novel by Nell Stevens BookBrowse Review: Critics' Consensus (2): Readers' Rating (22): First Published: Jul 1, 2025, 336 pages Book Reviewed by: Elisabeth Cook X Historical Fiction UK (Britain) & Ireland 19th Century Early 20th Century Uplifting Adult-YA Crossover Fiction LGBTQ+ Music and the Arts Genres & Themes Publication Information Rate this book
THE ORIGINAL | Kirkus Reviews
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship. An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it. Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day.
How I Lost the Fiancé but Won the Honeymoon
July 26, 2023 Alone on a honeymoon trip intended for her and her ex, Nell Stephens learns to leave behind the rules others set for her.
How I Lost the Fiancé But Won the Honeymoon
26 July - 23 mins Podcast Series Modern Love Bored and in love, Nell Stevens found a hobby combing the internet and entering her name into online contests. But, when she actually wins a prize — a luxury honeymoon in India — her world falls apart: The man she thought she was going to marry breaks up with her. She decides to go on the trip anyway.
Briefly, A Delicious Life
About The Book *A Cosmopolitan Best Book of Summer * One of BuzzFeed’s Most Anticipated LGBTQ+ Books* An “exquisite…too lovely to bear” (The New York Times Book Review) debut novel from an award-winning writer: a playful and daring tale about a teenage ghost who falls in love with the writer George Sand. In 1473, fourteen-year-old Blanca dies in a hilltop monastery in Mallorca.
Bookshop UK - Pride
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What Ghost Stories Taught Me About My Queer Self Original
In my favorite one, two girls, whose names were, say, Alice and Bethany, are walking through a meadow with Alice’s dog. They’re laughing, gossiping, and they pause at one point to make daisy chains for each other. (The daisy-chain detail always felt slightly awkward, but it was necessary for the ending to land.) Suddenly, out of nowhere, the dog violently turns on Bethany and kills her. Alice, panic-stricken, grabs the animal and runs home.
5 Historical Fiction Books Reinvigorating the Genre
An unforgettable debut novel from an award-winning writer: a lively, daring ghost story about a teenage ghost who falls in love with a writer who doesn’t know she exists. In 1473, fourteen-year-old Blanca dies in a hilltop monastery in Mallorca.
Review | 4 new historical fiction novels dominated by remarkable debut writers
The Woman with Two Shadows Sarah James Sourcebooks, 400 pages, $24.99 By May 1945, Columbia University physics student Lillian Kaufman has not heard from her twin Eleanor since she left for a classified army job in Tennessee two months earlier. When a phone call from a former classmate working on-site informs her that Eleanor has disappeared, Lillian travels there and pretends to be her twin in order to uncover what happened.
Briefly, a Delicious Life
An unforgettable debut novel from an award-winning writer: a lively, daring ghost story about a teenage ghost who falls in love with a writer who doesn’t know she exists. In 1473, fourteen-year-old Blanca dies in a hilltop monastery in Mallorca.
Patrick Graney - Ghost Notes
In her debut novel, Briefly, a Delicious Life, Nell Stevens imagines what happened in the winter of 1838–9, when Frédéric Chopin and George Sand stayed together in a Mallorcan monastery. This premise is made even more tantalising by the presence of a passionate, resentful ghost called Blanca, the novel’s narrator, who lives in the monastery and ends up falling in love with Sand.
Nell Stevens and Julia Armfield
Monday 27th June 2022 7pm - 8:30pm 107 Charing Cross Road Literary Event, Signing, Chargeable Event “A gorgeous, wildly seductive novel.” – Sarah Waters on Briefly, a Delicious Life by Nell Stevens “[Julia] Armfield is an enormous, gut-wrenching talent.” – Daisy Johnson, author of Everything Under Two of the most talented, imaginative young novelists writing in English, Nell Stevens and Julia Armfield come together in conversation at Foyles to discuss queer literature, what it can say about...
Briefly, A Delicious Life
About The Book An unforgettable debut novel from an award-winning writer: a lively, daring ghost story about a teenage ghost who falls in love with a writer who doesn’t know she exists. In 1473, fourteen-year-old Blanca dies in a hilltop monastery in Mallorca.
Cliché
[Content note: contains a brief discussion of miscarriage.] A few weeks into the first term of my first year of teaching Creative Writing in London, I asked my students for an example of a cliché. The answer they gave was: I love you. I’d been looking forward to the class.
Have You Earned This?
The first time I was asked the question, I had only the vaguest sense of what it meant. I was in a graduate fiction workshop in Boston; someone pointed to a particularly elaborate (read: florid) sentence in my short story and said, ‘I’m just wondering: have you earned this?’ The sentence was, I remember, a description of a reflection in a puddle: disruptive, implausible, a little in love with itself. It might even have involved a sunset.
Bleaker House by Nell Stevens: 9781101972861
“As funny as it is poignant.” —Lena Dunham “A mesmerizing literary levitation act. . . . [Bleaker House] swirls text, subtext, and context into a single narrative.” —Vogue “A literary feast. . . . an inventive memoir about a young writer’s struggle to find her literary footing.” —NPR “[A] meditative, engagingly comic reflection. . . . [Stevens] discovers not just the pains and pleasures of the artistic process, but the power of leaving one’s life behind for the sake of self-discovery.
16 of the Best Nonfiction Books for Fiction Lovers
This year, more than any year prior, I’ve had friends tell me that it’s their goal to read more nonfiction. Whether it’s because college turned them off to it or they can’t find a book that interests them, many turned to fiction and haven’t looked back. While that’s certainly not a bad thing, as someone who reads mostly nonfiction, it’s hard to contain my excitement when asked.
Seeking solace in women writers: Nell Stevens with Katharine Smyth
How do women writers of the past speak to us now? Join literary critic Lucy Scholes with authors Katharine Smyth and Nell Stevens as they discuss how the work of Virginia Woolf and Elizabeth Gaskell have respectively influenced their writing and their lives. Katharine Smyth is the author of All the Lives We Ever Lived.
Stuck on You: An Ode to the Second Person
I’m not going to write my second-person essay in the second person versus you’re not going to write your second-person essay in the second person. You tell yourself you’ll change it later. You’ll get a first draft done this way, because it’s easy, it feels right, flows better like this. Then I’ll change it back. She’ll change it back. You will. Or maybe no one will. Recently it seems I can’t write anything that isn’t second person.
The joy of Womansplaining
I’m having a conversation with my best friend about whether or not to have a baby. She is patient, listening while I go back and forth between imagined futures: child-free liberation and its potential regrets versus the fulfilments and inevitable trials of motherhood. I fret about money, about stigma, about disappointment, about pain, and she chips in occasionally with droplets of such profound wisdom that it takes me a moment each time to process what she is telling me.
Communing with Mrs. Gaskell
Before my publisher’s lawyer would sign off on my new book, she had certain requirements. The book is part memoir of my own love affair and part biographical fiction about the Victorian writer Elizabeth Gaskell; the attorney, having checked permissions for quoted material and approved my disclaimer, wanted reassurance from the story’s love interest that he was happy with his portrayal.
Modern Love: How I Lost the Fiancé but Won the Honeymoon
My email junk folder is like a glimpse into a fantastical world where Ray-Bans are free and Michael Kors is always having a sale. Typically I don’t open any before clicking “delete all,” but that day one caught my eye: “Congratulations Nell Stevens! You have won a luxury honeymoon to India!” I felt a dart of excitement followed by instant dismissal. But I found myself returning to it, rereading, showing friends. Because the thing was, maybe I had entered a competition to win a honeymoon.
10 best books to read this September
From the second world war to self help and an awful lot of Victorians… A new Kate Atkinson novel is always a reason to rejoice and Transcription was everything I was hoping for and more. Split between 1940 and a hush hush operation flushing out fifth columnists (Nazi sympathisers) and 1950 in the very dull and worthy BBC Radio Schools department, it’s impossible not to form a strong bond with the heroine, Juliet Armstrong.
A tale of two female authors bound by doomed love affairs
"The Victorian and the Romantic: A Memoir, a Love Story, and a Friendship Across Time"Doubleday. 258 pages, $26.95 Nell Stevens' "The Victorian and the Romantic: A Memoir, a Love Story, and a Friendship Across Time" is a book about writing a book.It is in some ways the opposite of Stevens' debut, "Bleaker House" (2017), which was a book about not writing a book, specifically a novel on which she was procrastinating while encamped on a remote part of the Falkland Islands.
New audiobooks by Michael Lewis, Nell Stevens and Jacqueline Woodson
Three audiobooks this month — “The Coming Storm,” “The Victorian and the Romantic” and “Harbor Me” — are different in almost every way, but have in common that listeners hear the authors’ own voices. Authors are not voice actors, so this isn’t always effective, but each of these readings is a special treat. If you think weather isn’t all that interesting, think again. Bestselling author Michael Lewis’ “The Coming Storm” is a deep dive into the science and politics of weather prediction.
Women Writers, Bibliomemoir and Me: Nell Stevens and Samantha Ellis in conversation with Lucy Scholes | Events at Waterstones Bookshops | Waterstones
What can we learn by looking at the lives of pioneering female authors, writing 200 hundred years ago? Join Nell Stevens and Samantha Ellis for an inspiring evening as they discuss nineteenth century writers Elizabeth Gaskell and Anne Bront , how these women have influenced their own life and work, and their recent books, which intertwine memoir and literary biography.
When It Didn't Work Out with a Living Writer, I Turned to the Dead
Relationships between writers never work out. We know this. They fall apart, dramatically, tragically—Plath and Hughes, for example—but even if they don’t, they’re indelibly marked with misery: jealousy, obsession, resentment. Somebody usually writes a memoir and their partner never forgives them. Somebody wins all the prizes.
Book review: Writers separated by centuries tackle matters of the heart in 'The Victorian and the Romantic'
In “The Victorian and the Romantic,” author Nell Stevens tells two stories about female writers in different eras.One starts in 1855 in Manchester, England, and the other in 2013, on a train from London to Paris. In the former, readers meet Mrs. Elizabeth Gaskell as she examines her life, her husband and a letter that has crushed her.
'The Victorian And The Romance' Imagines What It Would Be Like To Be Best Friends With Your Favorite (Dead) Author
You’ll be able to recognize Nell Stevens’ writing for two qualities: one, her books are blend of memoir and fiction, memoir and research, memoir and history; and two, she’s a writer who’s great at writing about not writing.
How I Lost the Fiancé but Won the Honeymoon
My email junk folder is like a glimpse into a fantastical world where Ray-Bans are free and Michael Kors is always having a sale. Typically I don’t open any before clicking “delete all,” but that day one caught my eye: “Congratulations Nell Stevens! You have won a luxury honeymoon to India!” I felt a dart of excitement followed by instant dismissal. But I found myself returning to it, rereading, showing friends. Because the thing was, maybe I had entered a competition to win a honeymoon.
Speaking Lessons
The Voice Coach lives in a tall pink house on Highgate Hill. When she opens her front door to greet me for the first time, she steps back, hands pressed to her heart, and gasps. "Oh, you came. " Her expression is that of a mother receiving an unplanned-but-hoped-for visit from a grown-up child. "Nell," she says, still not stepping aside or asking me in, "you are here. " I am here. I am here because I am worried about my voice and have decided I need professional help.
How Not To Write A Novel
How Not To Write A Novel Debut author Nell Stevens,who will be talking at our How to Get Published conference in Bournemouth on Saturday 28th April, shares her top tips on how not to write a novel... As a permanently-distracted, city-dwelling twenty-seven-year-old, I decided that the key to writing my first novel would be to take myself as far as possible away from friends, family and a functioning internet connection.
The beautiful imaginations of monster men - Boundless
The most distressing interview I have carried out in my journalistic career was with Jill Craigie, a notable film-maker as well as being the wife of the former Labour leader, Michael Foot. We did not speak about cinema or socialism, but about how she was, many years before, raped by the acclaimed novelist, Arthur Koestler. A biography of Koestler by Professor David Cesarani in 1999 had revealed him as a serial rapist and disclosed how one of his victims had been Jill Craigie in 1951.
The latest drama, after ‘My Struggle’ - Boundless
Before I interviewed Karl Ove Knausgaard in 2013, his publicist warned me: ‘Karl Ove doesn’t do small talk.’ This was both disappointing and surprising. I like small talk, in part because it can lead to bigger talk, and to say you don’t do it is daft, as we all have to do it at some point. Knausgaard’s books are full of flat dialogue and the details of everyday life, so I had expected to find in the Norwegian writer a fellow champion of small talk.
Out damned spot: torments of the thriller women - Boundless
1. For reasons that will become apparent, I have been in need of distraction lately. I have been in need of the kind of distraction that blots out not only small things, but all things. Regular diversions like talking or walking or drinking are insufficient. Rigorous exercise only takes the edge off. What I require is a more complete obliteration of myself, which is how, recently, I came to read eight contemporary thrillers in a row. I had never read a thriller before this stint.
Notes from an author: Nell Stevens | National Geographic Traveller (UK)
When I scoured Google maps for remoteness, flimsy-looking Bleaker stood out as the purest representation of what I was looking for. I was drawn to its precarious, peripheral position on the edge of the world, and to its name, the promise of not just bleakness, but a bleakness more profound than anywhere else. Bleaker: it was a challenge. And on Bleaker Island, I found what I feared, and what I thought I needed. It was empty. It was quiet and wide, and gaping and wild.
The Fitness Sensation Sweeping the Nation: Wearing Your T-Shirt in the Pool™!
The Fitness Sensation Sweeping the Nation: Wearing Your T-Shirt in the Poolâ„?! From the people who brought you Guy Fieri and casual racismâ„? comes the fitness sensation sweeping the nation: Wearing Your T-Shirt in the Poolâ„?! Tired of all the diet and exercise leading up to swimsuit season? Counting calories have you counting down the days until the sweet, merciful release of death?
Introducing AXE Body Spray’s “Real Greatness� Bottles for Men
Short or tall. Muscular or lanky. Balding or potbellied. Visibly ravaged by shingles, or covered in flies. No matter your age, clothing, complexion, body shape, or fly-cover ratio, we at AXE believe that all men are great men, because also so does society. Call us renegades, but we think the rich spectrum of male greatness that is totally divorced from physical appearance is something worth celebrating.
RSVPs to the Resistance
Brigitte! Thank you for cluing me into the resistance rally tonight outside the Capitol building. I can’t speak truth to power right now because it’s just too short notice to get a babysitter, but I was arrested in 2000 at the RNC if that helps. Miles, so exciting about the March for the Environment! I would be there in vegan shoes with vegan bells on if I hadn’t taken back the streets literally three days ago at the Economic Alliance march.
An Open Letter to Penguins
I would like to apologize on behalf of my species for making fun of you. Please understand that not all of my people view you in the ridiculous light in which you are portrayed on most TV specials and in most news articles. Contrary to what you may believe, many of my kind take you quite seriously. We have enormous respect for your flightless ancestry and your place in this world.
Questions and Answers Between a Doctoral Student Working On Their Dissertation and Anyone They Talk To
Questions and Answers Between a Doctoral Student Working On Their Dissertation and Anyone They Talk To Q. “How are you?� A. “OK, I’m working on my dissertation.� Q. “How’s work going?� A. “It’s fine, hard to get focused as I’m working on my dissertation.� Q. “So I was watching the news, and I heard that�� A. “That’s interesting, that may tie into what I’m working on for my dissertation�� Q. “We’re having a birthday party for our daughter, can you make it?� A.
Your Social Media Identity Crisis
LinkedIn You is a photo of your face and the shoulder parts of your navy lady sport jacket against an off-white wall. You’re competent and experienced, as evidenced by your two skill endorsements drafted by a friend and a coworker you never talked to from your first service job in high school. Your entire r?Šsum?Š is detailed with an ever-growing list of previous job experiences that include office work at your uncle’s law firm and a now defunct remote social media internship.
Nevertheless, He Persisted: Tales of Masculine Perseverance
Even after two too many after-work old-fashioneds, Jim Talbott, 33, sensed that the woman on the Brooklyn-bound L Train was not quite as attracted to him as he was to her. She didn’t smile or thank him when he told her, slurringly, that her dress was “real nice.” Instead, she plugged her ears with ear-buds and turned the volume all the way up. “Is that Beyoncé?” he asked, twice, to no reply.
Book Publicity in the Age of Trump
Book Publicity in the Age of Trump Dear person whose email address I accidentally acquired because of an invitation to a cocktail party that wasn’t bcc’ed, I have a book coming out! You might not have heard about it because these days book publicity is much more complicated than anyone knew. I’d love to send you a copy in hopes that you might consider featuring me on your TV program/radio show/blog/podcast/ Instagram/Facebook timeline.
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