The section about Dickens is great, too.

I've finally seen the trailer for the movie Effie Gray, written by Emma Thompson and inspired by the life of Euphemia Chalmers Millais, the one-time wife of the famous critic John Ruskin. I'm not hearing great things about the film, but it gives me an excuse to encourage people to check out one of my favorite nonfiction books about English literature: Phyllis Roses's Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages. One of the marriages in question is the Ruskins', and Rose offers a lot of fascinating (and super juicy) speculation as to how it all went so spectacularly wrong.