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Historia Magazine

The magazine of the Historical Writers Association

  • Features
  • New books
  • Topics
    • Writing historical fiction
    • History on your screen
    • Authors’ favourite books
  • Interviews
  • Reviews
    • Books
    • TV, Film and Theatre
    • Classics
  • Advertising in Historia
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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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New books by HWA members

Trouble Ahead at Coronation Close by Lizzie Lane

6 November 2026

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5 November 2026

No Country For a Woman by Jane Dismore

5 November 2026

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Lady Dorothy Mills, explorer and writer

24 March 2025

Crime and politics in the early 18th century

5 August 2024

How Victorian literature helped me write my debut novel

29 March 2023

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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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