Eliza Clark is the author of novels Boy Parts and Penance and the short story collection She's Always Hungry. Boy Parts was named Blackwell's Fiction book of the year and was adapted for the stage in 2023. She was named one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists, shortlisted for the Women's Prize Futures 10 award and listed on Forbes' 30 Under 30 Europe.

TOM CREWE was born in Middlesbrough in 1989. He has a PhD in nineteenth century British history from the University of Cambridge. Since 2015, he has been an editor at the London Review of Books, to which he contributes essays on politics, art, history and fiction.

The New Life is his first novel. Crewe says:
'This is the book I knew I wanted to write long before I actually wrote it. I hope it reveals to readers an unfamiliar Victorian England that will surprise and provoke, inhabited by a generation in the process of discovering the nature and limits of personal freedom, struggling to create a better world as the twentieth century comes into view.'