Neighboring Lives Book

Here's historical fiction centered on Chelsea in the 1830-60's, detailed and daily in its delights, Thomas Carlyle and his Jenny, the Rossettis and their crowd, Swinburne and Whistler with a glimpse of Turner. Domestic, quiet, the most extravagant events of a destroyed manuscript, mistresses and scandal embedded in the inexorable movement of days. The texture is soft and muted, with a whiff of the reeking Thames. You enter lives that have a great deal of persuasive ordinariness about them however notable the names. I wonder if Spall in his extensive research for the movie Mr. Turner happened upon this book? For atmosphere, for the time and place, I think the novel hard to match--a key to a past world.