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Historia Magazine

The magazine of the Historical Writers Association

  • Features
  • Interviews
  • Reviews
    • Books
    • TV, Film and Theatre
    • One From The Vaults
  • New books
  • Columns
    • Doctor Darwin’s Writing Tips
    • Watching History
    • Desert Island Books
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Brontë’s Mistress by Finola Austin

5 August 2021 By Editor

Yorkshire, 1843: Lydia Robinson has tragically lost her precious young daughter and her mother within the same year. She returns to her bleak home, grief-stricken and unmoored. With her teenage daughters rebelling, her testy mother-in-law scrutinizing her every move, and her marriage grown cold, Lydia is restless and yearning for something more. All of that […]

Review: Brontë’s Mistress by Finola Austin

3 September 2020 By Essie Fox

Author Essie Fox reviews Finola Austin’s “remarkable” debut novel, Brontë’s Mistress. Brontë’s Mistress by Finola Austin is a literary novel created in the classic style of Victorian sensation. It also echoes certain themes from the Brontë sisters’ work. But at the centre of this novel is not some younger woman in the throes of her […]

Brontë’s Mistress by Finola Austin

3 September 2020 By Editor

Yorkshire, 1843. Lydia Robinson, mistress of Thorp Green Hall, has lost her precious young daughter and her mother within the same year. She returns to her bleak home, grief-stricken and unmoored. With her teenage daughters rebelling, her testy mother-in-law scrutinizing her every move, and her marriage grown cold, Lydia is restless and yearning for something […]

The Brontë Affair: researching the scandal that enveloped literature’s most famous family

9 August 2020 By Finola Austin

Finola Austin had felt an affinity with the Brontë sisters for many years, but it was only while reading a biography of Charlotte that she became interested in their brother Branwell, who died young, like his sisters – but with his potential unfulfilled. His decline was blamed on a scandal involving Lydia, the older, married […]

Brontë’s Mistress by Finola Austin

6 August 2020 By Editor

Yorkshire, 1843. Lydia Robinson, mistress of Thorp Green Hall, has lost her precious young daughter and her mother within the same year. She returns to her bleak home, grief-stricken and unmoored. With her teenage daughters rebelling, her testy mother-in-law scrutinizing her every move, and her marriage grown cold, Lydia is restless and yearning for something […]

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Written in Blood by Fiona Forsyth

13 February 2026

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13 February 2026

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Historia Magazine is published by the Historical Writers’ Association. We are authors, publishers and agents of historical writing, both fiction and non-fiction. For information about membership and profiles of our member authors, please visit our website.

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