The Original
A Novel
1 July 2025
Territory Rights — Worldwide including Canada, Singapore and Malaysia, but excluding the British Commonwealth.
Description
In a grand English country house in 1899, an aspiring art forger must unravel whether the man claiming to be her long-lost cousin is an impostor.
Brought to her uncle’s decaying Oxfordshire estate when she was a child, Grace has grown up on the periphery of a once-great household, an outsider in her own home. Now a self-possessed and secretive young woman, she has developed unusual predilections: for painting, particularly forgery; for deception; for other girls.
As Grace cultivates her talent as a copyist, she realizes that her uncanny ability to recreate paintings might offer her a means of escape. Secretly, she puts this skill to use as an art forger, creating fake masterpieces in candlelit corners of the estate. Saving the money she makes from her sales, she plans a new life far from the family that has never seemed to want her.
Then, a letter arrives from the South Atlantic. The writer claims to be her cousin Charles, long presumed dead at sea, who wishes to reconnect with his family. When Charles returns, Grace’s aunt welcomes him with open arms; yet fractures appear in the household. Some believe he is who he says he is. Others are convinced he’s an impostor. As a court date looms to determine his legitimacy—and his claim to the family fortune—Grace must decide what she believes, and what she’s willing to risk.
Is Charles really her cousin? An interloper? A mirror of her own ambitions? And in a house built on illusions, what does authenticity truly mean—in art, in love, and in family?
Deftly plotted and shimmering with Nell Stevens’s distinctive intelligence, style, and wit, The Original takes readers on an unforgettable adventure through a world of forgeries, family ties, and the fluctuations in fortune that can change our fate.
Reviews
"Nell Stevens’s The Original wittily updates many Victorian novel tropes, weaving in art, fakery, secrets, and queer romance." — Carolyn Kellogg, Boston Globe
"Nell Stevens’s marvel of a novel The Original, a story of creativity, legacy and real worth, is full of narrative cunning, narrative goodness. What a very good heart it has." — Ali Smith, Guardian
"Immaculate in structure, sure-footed in tone and propelled forward by a rising tide of apprehension, the novel is a captivatingly strange masterpiece of Victorian pastiche. It puts Stevens in the class of Sarah Waters and even du Maurier herself as a sharp-witted fiction writer whose masterly technique and style are matched and sustained by a compelling gift for spinning a yarn." — Miranda Seymour, Financial Times
"The kind of porousness required by love may require us to bleed into each other in ways that make any notion of originality questionable. In book after book, Stevens is showing herself to be that rare thing: a writer who we can think alongside, even while she’s making things up. All the confection here in the end helps us to appreciate the steely and witty mind that seems, four books in, to have learned to delight in that hullabaloo of fakery." — Lara Feigel, Guardian
"Intricate, endlessly intriguing... The overall effect is of an author boldly stepping out on her own, pursuing themes that were hers all along." — Observer
"Wilkie Collins by way of Sarah Waters… Jane Eyre by way of Patricia Highsmith." — BBC
"Stevens’ book, divided into brief cleverly-titled chapters, is attentive to the language and manners of England’s late Victorian era while also looking ahead." — Chris Hewitt, Minneapolis Star Tribune
"There are more twists in Stevens’ stylish period novel than in an episode of The Traitors…she is a fine writer, offering both an assured narrative and shrewd commentary on art, love and life." — Mail on Sunday
"Stevens spins her tale with panache. She manages to impart a sense of having wandered through a hall of mirrors, while also raising tantalising questions about the relationship between literary language and the visual arts." — Literary Review
"A sensitive historical portrayal of queer love as well as serious reflections on art, identity and truth… adds to Stevens’s growing reputation as a creative and insightful novelist." — Daily Express
"A zippy, witty puzzler that puts its conceptual cleverness firmly in the service of readerly pleasure." — Daily Mail
"What a bewitching book this is. A sinuous, thrilling meditation on fakes and forgers, with echoes of Daphne du Maurier and Sarah Waters and an audacity that is totally original to Nell Stevens herself." — Olivia Laing, author of The Garden Against Time
"The Original is deliciously engaging and wildly intelligent. I adored this novel about art, authenticity, and desire and am a devoted fan of Nell Stevens." — Aysegül Savas, author of The Anthropologists
"A marvelously inventive and perfectly forged novel that poses a mischievous question: What role does likeness play in love? The ghosts of Oscar Wilde and Wilkie Collins stalk these pages, whether they know it or not." — Eleanor Catton, author of Birnam Wood
"A delightful, playful puzzle of a novel, and a brilliant twist on the nineteenth century orphan-makes-good story. The Original asks whether, sometimes, faking it is the right thing to do." — Claire Fuller, author of Unsettled Ground
"Astonishing, unputdownable, unforgettable, The Original is a tour de force. A historical novel with the immediacy of the best realist fiction. I absolutely loved it." — Joanna Rakoff, author of My Salinger Year
"Like varnish cracking to reveal a masterpiece underneath, The Original turns a tale of artistic copying into a thrilling study of class, ambition, and the ultimate confidence game: becoming oneself. Smart, sensual, and utterly mesmerizing, this is a novel of exquisite tension and craft." — Mark Prins, author of The Latinist
