Romantic, illuminating, and richly illustrated throughout, this biography is a rare opportunity to explore a fascinating area of Victorian bohemianism, based on new research and written with verve and sympathy. Madox Brown was always an outsider, refusing to join any group, even the Pre-Raphaelites with whom he was so closely associated; and the women he loved also burst out of accepted stereotypes. His wives, Elisabeth Bromley and Emma Hill, and his secret passions, the artist Marie Spartali and the author Mathilde Blind, were remarkable women from very different backgrounds. Their striving for self-expression in an age that sought to suppress them reveals much about womens' journeys towards modern roles. Elisabeth Bromley was born in 1818, the year Mary Shelley published Frankenstein; Marie Spartali died in 1927, a year before all women won the vote in Great Britain. Their lives—full of passion, sexual longing, tragedy, and determination—reach from the English countryside and the artist's studio, to a Europe in turmoil and revolution. These are not silent muses hidden in the shadow of the "Master"—they step out of the shadows and into the picture, speaking with voices the reader can hear and understand.