A Life Before: Find Your Way with the Story Index
A complete guide, with links, to download every episode based on the true life, coming of age stories of the activist Maud Gonne and the writer W.B. Yeats
A Life Before is a literary-historical novel set in 1880s France, Ireland, and England. The series is narrated by Rosy Cross, ‘the oldest woman in Ireland,’ and each episode is written to be read as a satisfying piece in itself—a series of short stories that, taken together, build to a five-act novel.
New episodes release each Tuesday and Saturday, most weeks.
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Act One:
1:1. A Strange House of Time In which our narrator Rosy Cross introduces herself and her trade, and takes us to the French spa town of Royat, where Maud Gonne lies awake before dawn, sobbing over a man.
1:1. Drowning Herself for Pleasure In which Rosy Cross takes us back to the first meeting between Maud Gonne and the elegant Boulangist politician Lucien Millevoye.
1:3. Amber Scorched with Honey In which Maud and Millevoye’s courtship deepens through politics, poetry, and sightseeing drives—until Great-Aunt Mary drops a cannonball on the drawing-room rug.
1:4. The Small Business of Truth In which we learn how Maud Gonne’s stage career to date has been a disaster but she is now more concerned with getting an explanation from Millevoye.
1:5. That Note of Soft Command In which Millevoye confesses all and asks Maud Gonne to become his mistress and his political accomplice.
1:6. Be Foolish With Me: The first conversation with W.B. Yeats: In which Rosy takes us across the Irish Sea to Dublin, to meet the young poet and dreamer as he learns that his father is moving the family back to London.
For those of you in love with your Kindles, Kobos and iPads, you can download an epub of the first chapters, to side load onto your e-reader
1:7. Being Who She Was In which Maud Gonne weighs a conventional life against the one Millevoye is offering — and, high on the slopes of the Puy de Dôme, makes her choice.
1:8. We Women Must Be Beautiful in which General Boulanger arrives to Royat to consider Maud Gonne’s suitability for the cause
1:9. A Life of Your Own in which Maud Gonne makes an unusual offer and makes her old nurse cry.
1:10. This is How to Live: In which Maud Gonne meets General Boulanger and is pulled into the political intrigue of his circle
1:11. A Man in Waiting: In which Maud Gonne and Lucien Millevoye spend a day together in Marseilles and he gives her an unusual gift to take to Constantinople
1:12. The Second Conversation with W.B. Yeats: In which the Brahmin, Mohoni Chaterjee, passes the timeless secret of happiness to the young poet
Act Two:
2:1.