Elizabeth Gilbert is the acclaimed author of five books of fiction and non-fiction. She is most well known for her 2006 bestseller Eat, Pray, Love, which has sold over ten million copies worldwide and was made into a film starring Julia Roberts. Her short story collection Pilgrims was nominated for the PEN/Hemingway Award, her novel Stern Men was a New York Times Notable Book and The Last American Man was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her most recent work, Committed, was a Number One New York Times bestseller. Elizabeth Gilbert lives in New Jersey.

www.elizabethgilbert.com

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LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILEYS WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WELLCOME BOOK PRIZE

From the moment Alma Whittaker steps into the world, everything about life intrigues her. Instilled with an unquenchable sense of wonder by her father, a botanical explorer and the richest man in the New World, Alma is raised in a house of luxury and curiosity. It is not long before she becomes a gifted botanist in her own right. But as she flourishes and her research takes her deeper into the mysteries of evolution, the man she comes to love draws her in the opposite direction - into the realm of the spiritual, the divine and the magical.

The Signature of All Things soars across the globe of the nineteenth century, from London and Peru, to Philadelphia, Tahiti and beyond. Peopled with extraordinary characters along the way, most of all it has an unforgettable heroine in Alma Whittaker.

Unlike anything else she has ever written ... Its prose has the elegant sheen of a 19th-century epic, but its concerns - the intersection of science and faith, the feminine struggle for fulfilment - are especially modern

The story of Alma Whittaker's journey of discovery has irresistible momentum

Ms Gilbert has established herself as a straight-up storyteller who dares us into adventures of worldly discovery, and this novel stands as a winning next act ... A bracing homage to the many natures of genius and the inevitable progress of ideas, in a world that reveals its best truths to the uncommonly patient minds

Charming and compelling ... A big novel in all senses - extensively researched, compellingly readable and with a powerful charm that will surely propel it towards the bestseller lists

Gilbert has written the novel of a lifetime

Sumptuous ... Gilbert's prose is by turns flinty, funny, and incandescent

Quite simply one of the best novels I have read in years ... a bejewelled, dazzling novel

Readers prepared to enter Gilbert Time will be rewarded: she is an unflaggingly curious writer, prone to delightful touches ... Gilbert's period interests seem boundless - she explores everything from self-sacrifice, to homosexuality, Darwinism and Victorian pornography ... This is a novel to be chewed over, slowly

A botanical odyssey through the nineteenth century, global in ambition, revelling in the period's insatiable curiosity about the world ... a tall tale, told with verve and wit

Filled with dazzling storytelling

Gilbert writes superbly well

An intricate, beautifully written historical novel ... A passionate paean to the 19th-century women of science who strove for achievement against the odds

Gilbert's observations, of both characters and locations, make this an unexpected joy and in Alma she has created a truly unforgettable heroine

Astute and funny ... comes with generous helpings of optimism and romance. Cynics need not apply

Ambitious, boldly imagined and packed with authenticating detail, it engages very boldly with the interaction of art and science

Gilbert reminds readers she can do, and undo, narratives through impeccably observed and original stories

Gilbert shows herself to be a writer at the height of her powers

Magnificent ... I was just a few pages into the book when I felt myself relax, aware that I was in the safe hands of a master story-teller

My own 500-pager of choice? Elizabeth Gilbert's The Signature of All Things ... just read it ... Hugely enjoyable