This varied, unusual selection of short stories presents Victorian love in all its moods, from triumphant to tragic. Covering a period that embraces both Elizabeth Gaskell and Somerset Maugham, these stories range from the sentimental to the satiric, the cruelly realistic to the perplexed, the mystical, and the rapturous. The lovers include a shopkeeper and an aristocrat, a seaweed gatherer, and a pair of herons. Self-sacrifice and adultery are prominent in these pages, as Victorian writers explored the nature of relationships at a time when women's growing independence brought into question traditional roles and assumptions. These stories confound expectations by dealing with their themes in wholly new and original ways, in fable and fairy-tale as well as bitter naturalism. Alongside familiar names such as Anthony Trollope and Thomas Hardy there are equally powerful stories by Lucy Clifford, Hubert Crackenthorpe, and Ellen T. Fowler. This is an exhilarating collection in which the complexity of love is wonderfully matched by the inventiveness of Victorian fiction.