Bloomsbury Girls

In December 1949, Evie Stone, a former servant girl and one of the first women to earn a degree from Cambridge, finds her research stipend expiring after three years at the all-female Girton College. Senior Fellow Christenson dismisses her application for a new position, implying that her colleague Stuart Wesley contributed more to her work. Evie retrieves a trade card for Frank Allen, a rare books acquirer at Bloomsbury Books, a century-old London bookshop, and resolves to start over.

On January 2, 1950, Evie arrives at Bloomsbury Books for an interview with Herbert Dutton, the general manager. The staff includes Grace Perkins, Dutton's secretary, and Vivien Lowry, who privately calls Alec McDonough, the head of fiction, "the Tyrant." In the basement, Ashwin Ramaswamy, an entomologist from India who was denied museum positions due to racial prejudice, sells science books. Scott, a gruff former navy officer, runs the History Department. During Evie's interview, Dutton collapses from a seizure. Evie calmly tends to him, and Dutton hires her to catalogue neglected rare books on the third floor.

Dutton's health forces him to take medical leave. He appoints Alec as acting general manager and elevates Vivien to acting head of fiction. Vivien reorganizes the fiction section to feature women authors sidelined under Alec. Evie settles into cataloguing while secretly searching for a book she knows Allen purchased at auction. The shop's owner, Lord Jeremy Baskin, a childless divorcé whose great-grandfather won the bookshop in a card game, remains hands-off, though Dutton and Allen have been accumulating shares through salary deferrals, planning to buy Lord Baskin's majority stake.

Vivien's past surfaces when two American tourists accuse her of stealing a Cartier Tank watch. Alec reveals an inscription proving it is hers. The watch was a gift from her fiancé, David, who was attacked in battle at Gazala in 1942; his body was never found. A flashback reveals that Vivien and Alec slept together once in 1945, after which Alec cruelly insulted her, and they have feuded since. Ellen Doubleday, the recent widow of American publisher Nelson Doubleday, Sr., witnesses the incident and later introduces Vivien to the novelist Daphne du Maurier, who reads Vivien's writing and offers to mentor her as a playwright.

Grace's husband, Gordon, is emotionally abusive, unemployed since a wartime mental health crisis, and increasingly controlling. Grace finds comfort in her growing connection with Lord Baskin, who shares coffee with her outside the shop and reveals his own loneliness.

Through flashbacks, the narrative reveals Evie's true motivation. At Cambridge, she discovered a letter by Thackeray praising The Mummy! A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century, published anonymously in 1827 by Jane Wells Webb at age 17. The novel predicted railways, television-like communication, and a female sovereign's reign, making it one of the earliest science fiction novels. Evie confirmed that Allen purchased the book for 20 pounds and has been searching every floor for it. On Sundays, she researches at the Natural History Museum, where she encounters Ash by chance, and a warm connection develops between them.

Vivien proposes holding literary luncheons and secures du Maurier as the inaugural guest. Du Maurier defends women's writing, and a photograph in The Times boosts customer visits by 20 percent. At the celebration afterward, Gordon arrives and physically pushes Grace. Lord Baskin intervenes. That evening, he shares the shop's financial structure with Vivien, who envisions the women acquiring the business.

Evie stays late one night and searches Scott's off-limits second floor, finding the three volumes of The Mummy!. Vivien and Alec sleep together again after the luncheon, but their détente collapses when Vivien discovers his published short story, "The Girl in the Shop," is an unmistakable portrait of her, published without her consent. Sonia Brownell Blair, the recent widow of George Orwell, reveals to Vivien that she had championed Vivien's own rejected submission to the literary journal Horizon, but the all-male editorial team preferred Alec's story.

Evie confides in Mimi Harrison, the famous actress and fellow Jane Austen Society member who had earlier offered Evie a letter of referral. Mimi advises Evie to trust others and to pursue her dream of reprinting lost works by women authors. After an evening lecture by the Irish playwright Samuel Beckett, the heiress and art collector Peggy Guggenheim describes her time at the Sunwise Turn, a Manhattan bookshop fully owned and operated by women. Evie appears and offers her help.

Evie shows Vivien and Grace the three volumes, explaining that the book's potential value far exceeds its marked price of 30 pounds. The women calculate that an auction could fund a buyout of Lord Baskin's shares. Yardley Sinclair, the director of museum services at Sotheby's, warns Evie that Wesley has been tracing her research trail, forcing them to act quickly. Ash tells Evie he plans to return to India, citing constant prejudice. Evie is devastated but too proud to respond.

Dr. Septimus Feasby, the principal keeper of printed books at the British Museum, arrives and demands Evie help him locate The Mummy!. Evie refuses to leave her station and truthfully states she has not seen the book on the third floor, where it is not. Feasby demands Dutton fire her for insolence. Grace intervenes: since Evie is owed no severance, she asks that Evie take one book from a non-rare-books department as a parting gift. Dutton agrees, and Evie chooses The Mummy! from the History Department shelves.

Grace and Vivien resign in protest. The three women meet Lord Baskin at the Savoy and announce their intention to buy his 51 percent stake, with the shop fully owned and operated by women. Grace has left Gordon and moved in with her mother.

Evie transcribes all 600 pages by hand before releasing the original to Sotheby's. On March 15, bidding opens at 200 pounds. As institutional buyers compete, five women drive the price upward: Doubleday, Mimi in disguise, Guggenheim, du Maurier, and Sonia Blair. Feasby wins the book at 3,000 pounds, an unprecedented sum for a female-authored work. Outside, Ash appears before Evie, takes her hand, and tells her he is not leaving, having found something he cannot find anywhere else.

Alec, meanwhile, meets with Beckett, who tells him his writing lacks genuine feeling and suggests he become an editor. Alone in the shop, Alec discovers Vivien's forgotten green notebook and reads her extraordinary writing. When Vivien returns for it, they share their first genuine conversation. Alec reveals he is leaving for Faber and Faber and has withdrawn his bid for the shop.

The women use the auction proceeds to buy Lord Baskin's shares. A clearance sale increases their holdings to approximately 7,000 pounds. Dutton and Allen accept buyouts. Wesley's contributions to a Cambridge annotation of Thackeray's Vanity Fair are found to contain plagiarism, ending his academic career. The five women who bid up the price receive a combined 45 percent interest as repayment.

The shop reopens on April 14, 1950, as Sunwise Turn. Grace, Vivien, and Evie are its proprietors. Evie oversees a handpress in the basement to reprint neglected works by women writers, starting with The Mummy!, for which 1,000 subscriptions have been placed. Vivien manages the fiction floor with a piece on submission at Faber. Grace and Lord Baskin sit together on the bench outside, hands clasped. The new rules replace Dutton's old regime: dignity and respect for all, career development for every employee, and, pointedly, everyone makes her or his own tea.