The Lioness of Boston

The Lioness of Boston (2023) is a historical novel by the American writer Emily Franklin. It focuses on the life of Isabella Stewart Gardner, an influential American art collector and the founder of Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Franklin utilizes details from Isabella’s life to explore themes of personal agency, feminism, and the defiance of social norms in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

This guide references the 2023 Godine edition; this edition of the novel contains a chapter numbering error in Part 1 and skips Chapter 16. This guide corrects this numbering error, though it may be present in other editions of the novel.

Content Warning: The novel and the guide reference infertility, miscarriage, suicide, and infant death.

Plot Summary

The novel begins in Boston, in 1861. Isabella is 21 and newly married to Jack Gardner, a wealthy Boston businessman; the couple moves into a beautiful mansion on Beacon Street. Isabella is opinionated and outspoken; she does not fit into Boston society. Apart from her sisters-in-law, Harriet and Julia, Isabella is quite isolated and lonely. She longs to become a mother and suffers emotionally as she struggles to conceive. She channels her energies into intellectual pursuits, architecture, gardening, and design.