The Principia of the Heart
Represented by Stephanie Cabot
“I fell hard for Megan Campisi’s extraordinary novel. It is a book that lingers… And with the gifts of a truly talented writer Megan brings her story to full life with a kind of magic, and beautiful, distinctive writing throughout. All at Grove are so excited to be publishing her!”
—Peter Blackstock, VP/Deputy Publisher, Grove/Atlantic
Love is a quintessence, the divine and enduring substance from which every body—earthly or celestial—is made.
Isaac Newton shared a bedroom for twenty years with John Wickins. Wickins was his amanuensis. He helped Newton build his famous telescope. Biographers say sharing a bedroom was just financial prudence, but The Principia of the Heart imagines more: two men trying to navigate a world with no place for their love. It follows their years together—the same years of Newton’s most breathtaking discoveries about gravity, optics, and calculus.
The Principia of the Heart considers two myths that turn on an apple: Isaac Newton’s triumph and Eve’s fall. It’s said Eve’s sin was temptation, but her story is just as much about curiosity and seeking hidden knowledge, which was a bigger part of Newton’s life than most people know. He
was an alchemist and a heretic. For Newton, Cambridge was Eden—a haven for devotion and experimentation. Enter John Wickins—son of a preacher and temptation personified. Theirs is a story of forbidden knowledge and forbidden love—a story of two deep-feeling young men trying to do right by their beliefs, their families and their own hearts.
This gorgeous, nuanced novel is a meditation on the many ways we need love: paternal love, childhood love, platonic love, carnal love, spiritual love, the weight of family expectations and its effect on our lives.
The Principia of the Heart sits among these other exceptional novels: Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell, Restoration by Rose Tremain, The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert.
Praise for Megan Campisi:
“Richly imaginative and strikingly contemporary.”—Kirkus