# Keeping the World Away

Canonical: https://www.bookquiver.com/margaret-forster/keeping-the-world-away/9780099496861

![Keeping the World Away](https://quivercdn.com/covers/vintage/margaret-forster/keeping-the-world-away_978-00-9949-686-1.jpg?v=2026-04-22%2010%3A03%3A04)

- Book: [Keeping the World Away](https://www.bookquiver.com/margaret-forster/keeping-the-world-away) ([Keeping the World Away.md](https://www.bookquiver.com/margaret-forster/keeping-the-world-away.md))
- Authors: [Margaret Forster](https://www.bookquiver.com/margaret-forster)
- Publisher: Vintage
- ISBN: 978-00-9949-686-1
- Pages: 352
- Published: 2007-03-01
- Language: en_GB
- Binding: Softcover

## Description

Lost, found, stolen, strayed, sold, fought over... This engrossing, beautifully crafted novel follows the fictional adventures, over a hundred years, of an early 20th-century painting and the women whose lives it touches. It opens with bold, passionate Gwen, struggling to be an artist, leaving for Paris where she becomes Rodin's lover and paints a small, intimate picture of a quiet corner of her attic room. Then there's Charlotte, a dreamy intellectual Edwardian girl, and Stella, Lucasta, Ailsa and finally young Gillian, who share an unspoken desire to have for themselves a tranquil golden place like that in the painting. Quintessential Forster, this is a novel about women's lives, about what it means and what it costs to be both a woman and an artist, and an unusual, compelling look at a beautiful painting and its imagined afterlife.