Last week, Smith & Taylor Classics — and imprint of Unnamed Press that publishes underrated gems of classic literature — released two seemingly disparate yet interconnected books: Hauntings by Vernon Lee (originally published in 1890) and The Romance of a Shop by Amy Levy (originally published in 1888). Lee and Levy met in Florence in 1886 and were likely lovers, though historical accounts of course sometimes cast them as friends. But the letters between them were full of love and reflections on being writers, and indeed both of their bodies of work teem with queer subtext quite easy for the modern reader to detect.
Smith & Taylor brings current authors together for conversations that close out these classics and deepen their contexts. For The Romance of a Shop by Amy Levy — which tells the tale of the four Lorimer sisters who open a portrait studio in the wake of their father’s death — writers Rachel León and Ruth Madievsky (author of one of my favorite sister novels, All-Night Pharmacy) came together to discuss the novel’s many textures. Below, find an exclusive excerpt of their conversation, and for the full conversation, pick up a copy of The Romance of a Shop.
And be sure to also read our exclusive excerpt of the conversation between myself and the horror author Gretchen Felker-Martin about Hauntings, also out from Smith & Taylor Classics.
Ruth Madievsky: Hi, Rachel.
Rachel León: Hi, Ruth.
RM: I’m so excited to hear what you thought of Romance of a Shop. I’ll kick us off with one of my lingering questions: Who is the narrator?! It’s so interesting that she has such a distinct personality, and yet we never learn who she is.
RL: I felt like the narrator was jealous of the Lorimer sisters.
RM: I assume it’s a she, because there’s a particular disdain for the way she describes the physicality of the female characters, not just these sisters but the other characters too. The internal patriarchal critic. It felt very in-group, very personal, the type of damage that you can only do to someone of the same gender.
A lot of the lines that I underlined in the book were these pithy, unforgiving judgments that felt so modern. “The woman’s paradise where all her nonsense is adorable” and “Lord Watergate might have loved her more if he had respected her less.” Conny tells the sisters, “You will be nothing if not aesthetic.” The concept of aesthetic is very online, very where we are in 2025. Everything’s an aesthetic. Those were some of the moments that felt to me like this book still has a lot to say about the times we’re in, for better or worse.
RL: For sure, we still prioritize aesthetics, probably more than back then. There’s another line I want to add: “But I don’t know that it matters about being good when you are as beautiful as all that.” Beauty continues to be supreme. Commodity, even. I mean, haven’t there been studies about how attractive women make more money? Factor in the gender pay gap, and a woman’s beauty, or lack thereof, can actually impact her livelihood and access to certain resources—including the creams or Botox or expensive gym memberships or whatever to maintain said looks. And it’s not only about the workplace. The novel illustrates how beauty also attracts people (i.e., love and companionship). So Phyllis, who is the most beautiful of the Lorimer sisters, ends up with the most privilege. That’s it—beauty as privilege. And we can contrast that with Gertrude: the first mention of her, she’s described as a pathetic figure—which, yes, might not be meant as cutting as it sounds now—but the narrator goes on to say she’s not a beautiful woman, and her looks “varied from day to day, almost from hour to hour.”
RM: That “hour to hour” bit is so brutal! No one is presented in a neutral way. I thought that was so interesting, because the way that writing is taught today, and the way that we’re so used to reading third-person novels now, is that the narration is almost invisible. This novel’s narration created a friction throughout the book where I kept wondering, Will we find out how the narrator is connected to this family? In a way, it doesn’t really matter. The book is about making art, and how we structure our lives, and the romance of discovering yourself through what you choose to do, sometimes under bleak circumstances. Though it did feel like some of the romantic entanglements were for the purpose of assuaging audiences to be okay with the Lorimer sisters’ other decisions, like it’s okay for these girls to go wild by leaning into their art and being these independent New Women because they end up with husbands. Maybe that’s the price of entry: the author wanted to check this box so readers could get sucked into the rest of the narrative and not be too prickled by these unanswered romantic questions.
RL: That’s interesting, because I really did feel like the romance between the male and female characters was just not that convincing. There’s never any moment where they’re just, like, fanning over each other. It felt almost clinical—no hint of unbridled passion here. But, at the same time, that was one of the things I loved about the novel, that the love aspect isn’t the point. That’s not what the novel was centered around. It really was centered around the shop—the romance of a shop, if you will.
RM: And then there’s the queer subtext of this book, especially knowing that the author was probably queer, having written love poems for the writer Vernon Lee. I think it’s fascinating how all the female characters either have to get their happy marriage or not, and everything is refracted through whether they get that. Their romantic lives were questions that demanded answers, whether or not those questions actually felt like the heart of the book (I agree with you that they didn’t). I kept wondering about Gertrude’s sexuality, her potential queerness, because she constantly feels like an outsider who’s unfit for love. Gertrude’s own experience of love seems repressed for much of the book, and then very quickly it’s like, What are we going to do with you, Gertrude? Which man will it be? Because obviously it will be a man, so chop-chop.
RL: Come on, Gerty. Time’s a wastin’!
RM: I’m also dying to talk about Fanny. Something else that I thought was very contemporary was the way that Fanny is described throughout most of the book as if she’s a child, even though she’s the oldest sibling, because she had this failed romance. She didn’t marry a past suitor because he didn’t have enough money, and she’s totally infantilized by her siblings, by the rest of her family, and by other people in her orbit. Being an unmarried woman who’s probably in her thirties is portrayed as a kind of arrested development. Obviously today a lot of people still unfairly look upon unmarried women, and especially women who choose not to have children, as immature or mentally ill. But then Fanny finds a suitor, and suddenly, she’s seen as this mature, normal, healthy woman who’s actually kind of pretty, and actually she has interesting, smart things to say. I thought that was so wild, how Fanny went from being described as if she’s a tragic figure who possibly has a challenging developmental disability, to being described as a totally thriving woman.
RL: And Fanny definitely feels like an outsider with her sisters. She does have a different mom, right? But it seems to go beyond that. She is relegated to basically being their maid, doing unpaid domestic labor. Everyone else is doing the work of running this photography business—the work that’s valued. And that sentiment continues to be true: anything that brings in money has inherently more value than work that doesn’t, whether that be domestic labor or art. And of course Fanny isn’t happy with the arrangement, lashing out at one point about how dull it is to be stuck alone all day while her sisters are “gadding about at gentlemen’s studios.”
But while Fanny is the outsider of the group, out of the sisters’ love stories, hers is more of a real romance. I mean, Mr. Marsh goes off and makes his fortune to win her back! He fights for her. I see her as the most conservative sister, and maybe that makes her fit better in the world. Though she only truly does after being married. Like she’s only considered successful once she’s been married off—it’s a man making her whole. But still, I think she’s less staunchly, unapologetically herself, and I think that’s what makes her successful at snagging a husband: she’s willing to bend more than her sisters.
RM: She’s the one who seems the most downtrodden of all of them. Like kind of a hopeless project that no one really expects to thrive. Were you also surprised when, after she finds her suitor, suddenly she’s this poised person? As though finding a male partner has “fixed” her? The narrator portrays it as a glow-up, but it’s pretty tragic, actually.
RL: Yeah, there’s a hint of that for sure.
Indulge me here, but of any possible romance in the novel, I felt like there was more tension between Gertrude and Conny than there was between any of the hetero couples. I don’t know that non-queer readers would read into it at all, like there’s nothing that’s overtly queer, but there was subtext for sure. The first scene with Conny, I don’t remember who puts her arms caressingly around the other one, but that word, “caressing.” It’s like, Oh, okay. And then Fred talks about Phyllis being the prettiest, Lucy being the nicest, and then Conny’s like, “Gerty is worth ten of her.” It seems like more than just speaking up for her friend. And Conny is worried about losing Gerty later in the novel, toward the end.
RM: I was shocked to learn at the end of the book that Gertrude’s, like, twenty-five or something! Basically a fetus in my eyes, but clearly past her prime for that era. She has the sensibility of an old spinster trying to keep the family running. I was like, Oh my god, you’re so young. No wonder you’re crashing out over a crush.
RL: And when Conny writes a letter to her, it “hurt [Gertrude’s] taste, and depressed her rather unreasonably.” It just felt like she was reacting to this on an incredibly emotional level that I think went deeper than friendship.
RM: Yeah, you’re convincing me. They had an inexplicably vexed relationship where, on the one hand, it feels like Gertrude is judging Conny for being ditzy and too much of a social climber, and Conny maybe feels rejected by Gertrude or thinks that Gertrude is a little high and mighty. But I wondered if part of the reason that Gertrude keeps her distance is because she’s attracted to her and that it’s painful to be around each other and not act on that desire. Or that Gertrude is afraid to examine that relationship or test its limits. It could go either way. That’s what feels so masterful about those depictions—there’s a convincing queer subtext, but I could also be convinced that there’s nothing there.
RL: There’s one more part at the end when Gertrude talks about this love that was offered to her, and it says, “For other women, for happier women, for better women, perhaps, but not for her.” So again, this might be just me reading things into it. It could be that she just feels different.
RM: Feels very telling! If Amy Levy had said on the record that there was nothing there, maybe I could be like, Okay, well, maybe just me seeing what I want to see!
RL: Just maybe.
You mentioned earlier the girls going wild by leaning into their art, and I’d love to go back to that. Because it’s true, but also there can be this pragmatic aspect to the role of a photographer—at least here, where it’s not just about art. I’m thinking about them photographing the deceased Lady Watergate. Like, postmortem photography makes sense in that you can finally acquire a photograph of someone you loved, but it was definitely not an enjoyable assignment. It read like a chore, handling and posing a dead body. As opposed to writing, which feels like a pipe dream in the novel. Everyone talks about Gerty’s talent as a writer, like her work could indeed sustain her financially, but I got the sense she didn’t believe it. I love the line when she’s talking about one of her [fictional] characters and says, “She has been to market so often that I cannot bear the sight of her.” Relatable!
RM: Ha, same. And now I’m imagining a Victorian “Girls Gone Wild” video that’s just four mourning sisters trying to get a photography business off the ground.
The Romance of a Shop by Amy Levy is out from Smith & Taylor Classics now.
