In 1955, Vivien Lowry’s latest play, the only female-authored play on the London stage that season, has opened in the West End to rapturous applause from the audience. The reviewers, however, are not impressed, and their savage notices not only shut down the play but ruin Lowry's last chance for a dramatic career. At the suggestion of her friend, Peggy Guggenheim, Vivien takes a job as a script doctor on a major film shooting in Rome. There she finds a vibrant movie making scene in a country that is torn between its past and its potentially bright future, between the liberation of the post-war cinema and the restrictions of the Catholic Church that permeates the very soul of Italy. As Vivien tries to forge a new future for herself, she also must face the long-buried truth of the recent World War and the mystery of what really happened to her deceased fiancé.

Bloomsbury Books is an old-fashioned new and rare bookstore that has persisted and resisted change for a hundred years, run by men and guided by the general manager's unbreakable 51 rules. But in 1950, the world is changing, especially the world of books and publishing, and at Bloomsbury Books, the girls in the shop have plans. As they interact with various literary figures of the time --- Daphne Du Maurier, Ellen Doubleday, Sonia Blair (George Orwell's widow), Samuel Beckett, Peggy Guggenheim and others --- these three women with their complex web of relationships, goals and dreams are all working to plot out a future that is richer and more rewarding than anything society will allow.

Just after the Second World War, in the small English village of Chawton, an unusual but like-minded group of people band together to attempt something remarkable. One hundred and fifty years ago, Chawton was the final home of Jane Austen, one of England's finest novelists. Now it's home to a few distant relatives and their diminishing estate. With the last bit of Austen's legacy threatened, a group of disparate individuals come together to preserve both Jane Austen's home and her legacy. These people --- a laborer, a young widow, the local doctor and a movie star, among others --- could not be more different, yet they are united in their love for the works and words of Austen. As each of them endures their own quiet struggle with loss and trauma, they rally together to create the Jane Austen Society.