Eliza and Lister have never been this wide-awake in their lives, and the Slope, with its curtains drawn wide, is bright with starlight.

The question Eliza’s been needing to ask swells like a great berry in her mouth, and all at once she’s not scared to let it out, not scared at all, not scared of anything . . .

In 1805 fourteen-year-old Eliza Raine is a schoolgirl at the Manor School for Young Ladies in York. The daughter of an Indian mother and a British father, Eliza was banished from Madras to this unfamiliar country at the age of six. At the Manor School she keeps her head down and follows all the rules, until the arrival of a charismatic and fearless new student, Anne Lister. The two outsiders are thrown together and soon Eliza’s life is turned upside down by this remarkable young woman.

Learned by Heart, Emma Donoghue’s mesmerising new novel, tells the heartbreaking true story of two women whose unlikely relationship will change them for ever.