Charity and Sylvia
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Drawn and Quarterly
Publishing:16th Jun '26
£25.00
This title is due to be published on 16th June, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
An openly Lesbian couple survives and thrives in 19th century Vermont a true story, as told by Tillie Walden. The month is February in the year 1807. The place is Weybridge, Vermont: small, cold, lonely, and beautiful. Sylvia Drake is exhausted. As an unwed woman with few prospects, she is residing with and caring for her sister s rambunctious family. Today the house is abuzz awaiting a guest Charity Bryant. A friend of the family, she is most known for her elegant letters, with their swoopy and evocative penmanship and carefully chosen prose. But Charity s visit is a guise, she is coming to Vermont to start over after heartbreak and rumours so many rumours that have grown too loud back in Massachusetts. Being openly gay in 19th century New England is not an easy row to hoe. But Charity can only be herself, and she immediately catches and holds the eye of none other than Sylvia Drake. From this point on, for 44 years, the two would be inseparable, building a life together despite all odds and living as a lesbian couple in small town Vermont. The true, exceptional story of these remarkable women is brought to life with humor and passion by the unparalleled and award-winning Tillie Walden (Spinning, On A Sunbeam). We see America grow alongside these women over a period that brings about the railroad, many novels, 14 Presidents, riots, rebellion, plagues, and poetry. Based on extensive archives of their writing, Charity and Sylvia is a groundbreaking biography that is also the story of 19th century America.
'In Charity and Sylvia, the preternaturally gifted Tillie Walden surpasses herself. She relates this true story of two women living as a couple in early 19th century Vermont with a pitch-perfect blend of modern sensibility and richly textured archival detail. Her irrepressible drawings are crowded with large families in small candlelit houses, the tackle and trim of daily chores, moody landscapes, and shifting weather. As the scenes of life in a New England village unspool, time seems to slow and lengthen to a pre-industrial pace, with plenty of room for contemplation. Charity and Sylvia ply their needles with a patience and dedication that seem almost inconceivable to us today, but Walden s unstinting pen gives them a run for their money.' - Alison Bechdel, Fun Home. 'A fascinating and moving story that s told perfectly with compassion, grace, and a beautiful drawing style.' Chester Brown, Paying For It. 'Charity and Sylvia is a staggering achievement: a lesbian love story that both moves and enlightens us. Tillie Walden has vividly brought to life the passion, struggles, and everyday realities of two women who in the American semi-wilderness built a life together with hard work, commitment, and joy. Walden's work like that of Charity and Silvia s is a marriage of art and love.'- Michael Bronski, A Queer History of the United States. 'A moving historical epic and a story of love, all told in kitchens, bedrooms, sewing parlors. As we ask ourselves how we might survive now, this mostly true love story almost as old as the state, full of what we love about the queer women who lived then, describing how they found their love and how they worked to keep it and each other safe, well, this is not just a book but a rock in a storm, and with answers. Tillie Walden shines as always in portraying the mix of the little sillinesses, serious moments, the humor and affection that held them amid so much of what tried to tear them apart, but taken together what accumulates in the eye and the heart can only be a masterpiece.' Alexander Chee, How to Write an Autobigraphical Novel
ISBN: 9781770468382
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
260 pages