The Romance of a Shop

by Amy Levy

Overview

Amy Levy’s The Romance of a Shop (1888) follows the four Lorimer sisters in the wake of their father’s death. 

Penniless and reliant on each other, they decide to open a photography studio at 20B Baker Street, offering the citizens of London quality portraits. It’s the 1880s and photography is not only growing in popularity and accessibility, but those with a critical eye are elevating the medium associated with quick and steady cash into a true art form. 

With more women entering the workforce out of necessity and rebellion, the Lorimer sisters take advantage of newfound independence as they work to survive poverty, the grind and smoke of London, fraught courtships, and melodramatic twists of fate. A novel of sisterhood, love, the female gaze and postmortem photography Levy deftly  balances along the thin lines of romance and realism, art and commerce.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781023534512
Publisher:	Anson Street Press
Publication date:	03/29/2025
Pages:	150
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.32(d)

About the Author

Amy Judith Levy (1861–1889) was an English essayist, poet, and novelist who wrote three novels, three collections of poetry, and short stories. She is best remembered for her literary gifts, her experience as the second Jewish woman at Cambridge Universityas well as the first Jewish student at Newnham College, and her relationships with both women and men in literary and politically activist circles in London during the 1880s. Upon her death at the age of 27, Levy was eulogized in the pages of The Woman’s World by its editor Oscar Wilde, who said that her work “was not poured out lightly, but drawn drop by drop from the very depth of her own feeling.”

Ruth Madievsky is the author of the national bestselling novel, All-Night Pharmacy, winner of the California Book Award and the National Jewish Book Award for Debut Fiction, and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. Her work appears in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Los Angeles Times, The Cut, Harper's Bazaar, and elsewhere. Originally from Moldova, she lives in Los Angeles, where she works as a clinical pharmacist.

Rachel León is a writer, editor, and social worker based in Rockford, IL. She is the Managing Director for Chicago Review of Books and Fiction Director for Arcturus. Her work has appeared in The Rumpus, Catapult, LA Review of Books, and elsewhere. She is the editor of The Rockford Anthology (Belt Publishing, 2025) and the author of the novel, How We See the Gray (Curbstone Books, 2026). 

Allison Miriam Smith is a co-founder of Smith & Taylor Classics. She is also an Acquiring Editor and Publishing & Publicity Manager for Unnamed Press. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English & Creative Writing from the University of Southern California where she was an assistant curator for the USC Doheny Library George Cassady Lewis Carroll Special Collection. She later went on to earn a Masters in 18th & 19th c. Literature from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, working nights at the library. Before Unnamed Press, she was a bookseller at Skylight Books in Los Angeles, CA.

Brandon Taylor is the author of the novels The Late Americans and Real Life, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, and named a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and a Science + Literature Selected Title by the National Book Foundation. His collection Filthy Animals, a national bestseller, was awarded The Story Prize and shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize. He is the 2022-2023 Mary Ellen von der Heyden Fellow at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. He is an Acquiring Editor at Unnamed Press and co-founder of Smith & Taylor Classics.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction
Amy Levy: A Brief Chronology
A Note on the Text

The Romance of a Shop

Appendix A: Contemporary Reviews of The Romance of a Shop

1. From “The Newest Books,” British Weekly (26 October 1888)
2. “The Romance of a Shop,” The Jewish Chronicle (2 November 1888)
3. “The Romance of a Shop,” The Spectator (3 November 1888)
4. From George Saintsbury, “New Novels,” The Academy (10 November 1888)
5. From H.C. Brewer, “New Novels,” The Graphic (24 November 1888)
6. Oscar Wilde, “Amy Levy,” The Woman’s World (1890)

Appendix B: Other Writing by Levy

1. “The Poetry of Christina Rossetti,” The Woman’s World (February 1888)
2. “Women and Club Life,” The Woman’s World (June 1888)
3. “Readers at the British Museum,” Atalanta (April 1889)
4. “Eldorado at Islington,” The Woman’s World (1889)
5. Poetry

Appendix C: Literary Contexts

1. From John Ruskin, “Fiction—Fair and Foul,” The Nineteenth Century (October 1881)
2. From Oscar Wilde, “The Decay of Lying,” The Nineteenth Century (January 1889)
3. A. Mary F. Robinson, “Will,” Women’s Voices (1887)
4. Michael Field, “The Moon Rose Full,” Long Ago (1889)
5. Dollie Radford, “From Our Emancipated Aunt in Town,” Songs and Other Verses (1895)

Appendix D: The Woman Question

1. From Grant Allen, “The Girl of the Future,” The Universal Review (1890)
2. From Clementina Black, “The Organization of Working Women,” The Fortnightly Review (November 1889)

Appendix E: Victorian Photography

1. From [Lady Elizabeth Eastlake], “Photography,” Quarterly Review (April 1857)
2. Levy at Newnham College: Norwich House (1880)

Appendix F: Map of Levy’s London from Bacon’s New Map of London (1885)

Select Bibliography

Editorial Reviews

It is an unexpected pleasure to have Amy Levy’s fascinating 1888 novel, The Romance of a Shop, in a well-annotated modern edition. Levy, an Anglo-Jewish poet and novelist who was educated at Newnham College and frequented the London circles of Eleanor Marx and Olive Schreiner, has been the subject of increasing interest over the last ten years. Levy’s novel chronicles the romance of work and the trials of independent urban life for the ‘new woman’; Susan David Bernstein gives us a splendid edition, with appendices that include Levy’s essays and poems, reviews, and other invaluable contemporary materials.” — Deborah Nord, Princeton University

From the Publisher

"It is an unexpected pleasure to have Amy Levy's fascinating 1888 novel, The Romance of a Shop, in a well-annotated modern edition. Levy, an Anglo-Jewish poet and novelist who was educated at Newnham College and frequented the London circles of Eleanor Marx and Olive Schreiner, has been the subject of increasing interest over the last ten years. Levy's novel chronicles the romance of work and the trials of independent urban life for the 'new woman'; Susan David Bernstein gives us a splendid edition, with appendices that include Levy's essays and poems, reviews, and other invaluable contemporary materials."

Deborah Nord Princeton University