The Rules of the Heart
The novel The Rules of the Heart is a fictional account of the real life love affair of between Lady Harriet Bessborough and Lord Granville Leveson Gower.[1]
Janice Hadlow published the novel in late 2025, shortly before her earlier novel, The Other Bennet Sister, was made into a very popular 10-part television series.
In 2019 a large trove of letters and other previously unpublished documents from the Gower estate were made public, documenting the affair.[2] The novel is framed by Bessborough, at 51, reviewing her letters, to try to make sense of the affair, after Gower marries a much younger woman.
In real life Beesborough was a dozen years older than Gower.[2] He pursued her, even though she was married. She eventually entered into an affair with him, and, during their 17 year long relationship, she had two miscarriages, and bore him two children.[3]
A reviewer in Publishers Weekly called it a "sweeping and gorgeous tearjerker of a historical romance".[3] A reviewer, in Kirkus Reviews, grew extremely impatient with the novel, complaining it took over a third of the novel to get to the point where Bessborough agrees to begin the affair.[4]
References
[edit | edit source]- ↑ Janice Hadlow (2025). Rules of the Heart: A Novel. Henry Holt and Company. ISBN 9781250129475.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1
"Diplomacy, passion and power: British Library acquires the Granville Archive, detailing two centuries of political and private lives at the highest level". The National Heritage Memorial Fund. 2019-03-29. Archived from the original on 2026-04-15. Retrieved 2026-07-08.
An extraordinary cache of personal correspondence never before available to researchers, including intimate and candid letters between Lord Granville and his lover, Harriet, Countess of Bessborough (1761-1821), relating both to their secret love affair, and to the two illegitimate children she bore him in secret.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 "Rules of the Heart by Janice Hadlow". Publishers Weekly. Retrieved 2026-07-08.
- ↑ "RULES OF THE HEART". Kirkus Reviews. 2026-01-20. Retrieved 2026-07-08.