The History of David Grieve

A Derbyshire farm boy educated by chance goes to Manchester and then to Paris, and spends his life trying to reconcile faith with what he has read. Mrs Humphry Ward was the best-selling serious novelist of the 1890s and the most prominent opponent of votes for women, which cost her the reputation her books had earned. Fifty-five plates of painting from 1855 to 1918, among them Manet and Renoir, trace the rural and spiritual landscapes of the world David Grieve moves through.