Press release

HARPERCOLLINS CANADA ACQUIRES EMMA DONOGHUE’S NEW NOVEL LEARNED BY HEART

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (Toronto, August 30, 2022)

HarperCollins Canada is thrilled to have acquired Canada English rights to award-winning, bestselling author Emma Donoghue’s next historical fiction novel, Learned by Heart, set to hit shelves August 2023. The upcoming novel showcases the real-life love story of historical figures Eliza Raine and Anne Lister—Lister’s diaries were the inspiration for the HBO series Gentleman Jack. Senior Vice President and Executive Publisher Iris Tupholme acquired the novel stating, “A new novel from the brilliant Emma Donoghue is always cause for celebration and Learned by Heart is a story readers will love. Emotionally intense, psychologically compelling, and deeply researched, Learned by Heart is an extraordinary work of fiction by one of the world’s greatest storytellers. Full of secret passion, great love, and heartbreak, the tangled lives of Anne Lister and Eliza Raine form a love story for the ages.”

Drawing on Donoghue’s years of investigation and Anne Lister’s five-million-word secret journal, Learned by Heart is the long-buried love story of Eliza Raine, an orphan heiress banished from India to England at age six, and Anne Lister, a brilliant, troublesome tomboy, who meet at the Manor School for young ladies in York in 1805. Emma Donoghue said of the new novel, “I’ve been obsessed with Anne Lister and Eliza Raine for the past three decades, so to be bringing their story to a worldwide audience with my dream team of HarperCollins Canada, Picador, and Little Brown is just fantastic.”

This new novel comes on the heels of a very busy year for Donoghue. Her stage version of Room had its North American premiere in London and Toronto, and the film adaptation of her 2016 Scotiabank Giller Prize-shortlisted novel The Wonder, starring Florence Pugh and co-written by Donoghue herself, will screen at TIFF this September, with a release slated later this fall on Netflix. Donoghue’s newest historical novel, Haven, a pressure-cooker survival novel following three monks in 600 AD, went on-sale August 23, 2022, debuting as an instant Canadian bestseller.
Emma Donoghue is represented by Caroline Davidson at CDLA London. The book deal was brokered by Caroline Davidson. Learned by Heart will be co-published by Judith Clain at Little, Brown and Company in the United States, and by Ravi Mirchandani at Picador, UK.

Born in Ireland, national bestselling author EMMA DONOGHUE spent many years in England and now lives in Canada. Her books include Room (basis for the Oscar-nominated film), Slammerkin, and The Pull of the Stars. Her novels have been translated into forty-two languages.