{"product_id":"2026200018805-secondhand-love-among-the-butterflies-the-secret-life-of-a-victorian-lady","title":"Love Among The Butterflies: The Secret Life Of A Victorian Lady","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCondition remarks:\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBook: Good\u003cbr\u003eJacket: Chipped and worn with some minor damage\u003cbr\u003ePages: Good\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFew lives have been as vividly and secretly documented as that of Margaret Fountaine, a Victorian gentlewoman who broke every convention of her era to roam the wild corners of the world in pursuit of exotic butterflies — and passionate love. Love Among the Butterflies: The Secret Life of a Victorian Lady presents the extraordinary diaries of Fountaine, a woman who, from the 1870s onward, chronicled decades of adventure across Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and the Americas, all while conducting a lengthy, unconventional romance with a Syrian dragoman named Khalil Neimy. Her journals, sealed for 100 years and opened in 1978 as she had instructed, detail the inner life of a woman who was at once a rigorous natural scientist and a deeply passionate romantic, defying the rigid expectations of Victorian womanhood at every turn.\n\nEdited with care and intelligence, this volume illustrates how a single life can overturn all assumptions about the prim and repressed Victorian age, revealing instead a world of breathtaking personal freedom hard-won by sheer force of will. Fountaine's prose is vivid, candid, and often wickedly self-aware, offering an intimate portrait that reads as both personal confession and travel epic. Her story stands as a landmark in the literature of women's lives, a testament to the power of obsession — whether for a rare specimen pinned in a net or a love that defied an entire society. What other secrets did she leave behind, still waiting to be discovered?\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Secondhand Stock","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50572594544859,"sku":"2026200018805-SECONDHAND","price":12.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0523\/7646\/9701\/files\/cd0739c1-0128-43c5-8d1f-01892b644249.png?v=1791166892","url":"https:\/\/bookgrocer.com\/products\/2026200018805-secondhand-love-among-the-butterflies-the-secret-life-of-a-victorian-lady","provider":"Book Grocer","version":"1.0","type":"link"}