The Romance of a Shop

With this elegant edition, Smith & Taylor Classics celebrates Levy's sharp and modern tale of ambition, survival, and the female gaze.

The Romance of a Shop follows the four Lorimer sisters in the wake of their father's death. Penniless and reliant on each other, they decide to open a photography studio at 20B Baker Street, offering the citizens of London quality portraits.

It's the 1880s and photography is not only growing in popularity and accessibility, but those with a critical eye are elevating the medium associated with quick and steady cash into a true art form.

With more women entering the workforce out of necessity and rebellion, the Lorimer sisters take advantage of newfound independence as they work to survive poverty, the grind and smoke of London, fraught courtships, and melodramatic twists of fate. A novel of sisterhood, love, the female gaze and postmortem photography Levy deftly balances along the thin lines of romance and realism, art and commerce.

Featuring a conversational afterword from writers Ruth Madievsky and Rachel León.

Amy Judith Levy (1861-1889) was an English essayist, poet, and novelist who wrote three novels, three collections of poetry, and short stories. She is best remembered for her literary gifts, her experience as the second Jewish woman at Cambridge University as well as the first Jewish student at Newnham College, and her relationships with both women and men in literary and politically activist circles in London during the 1880s. Upon her death at the age of 27, Levy was eulogized in the pages of The Woman's World by its editor Oscar Wilde, who said that her work "was not poured out lightly, but drawn drop by drop from the very depth of her own feeling."

Ruth Madievsky is the author of the national bestselling novel All-Night Pharmacy, winner of the California Book Award and the National Jewish Book Award for Debut Fiction, and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. Her work appears in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Los Angeles Times, The Cut, Harper's Bazaar, and elsewhere. Originally from Moldova, she lives in Los Angeles, where she works as a clinical pharmacist.

Rachel León is a writer, editor, and social worker based in Rockford, IL. She is the Managing Director for Chicago Review of Books and Fiction Director for Arcturus. Her work has appeared in The Rumpus, Catapult, LA Review of Books, and elsewhere. She is the editor of The Rockford Anthology (Belt Publishing, 2025) and the author of the novel, How We See the Gray (Curbstone Books, 2026).