Charles Dickens (Ralph Fiennes) was not only a prolific writer, but also a charismatic speaker. He was married with numerous children, and yet emotionally isolated within his success. This is the story of Nelly, a young woman who comes under the focus of Dickens’ passion and has an exciting but fragile relationship with him. Being his ‘muse’ was to be controlled and isolated, to live in secrecy and ultimately, to be invisible. Like Dickens’ writing, which showed glimpses of the hard and harrowing lives of poverty most lived vs the extreme luxury of a few others, this film shows also how woman and children of that time were considered by law to be property of by men.