We are in November 1859 and Elizabeth Gaskell decides to spend a vacation of 15 days in Whitby, Yorkshire town. Here he began to do research on whaling, the forced conscription of sailors in the British fleets during the wars against France and the subsequent popular rebellions. From whatever comes this novel called "Sylvia's lovers". Whitby town is renamed Monkshaven, but the whole context is maintained exactly: the Abbey, the port, the farms, the sea. The writer tells again the story of humble social classes, perhaps the saddest story I have ever written, the story of Sylvia Robson and his two lovers, Charley Kinraid, a fearless harpooner and manly and Philip Hepburn, a simple shop salesman. But, as in many stories, the writer really never uniquely interpretable and events follow each other in always new twists that change more and more characters. Only the sea, in the background, with its rushing waters, remains identical to itself, with its language that speaks of eternity ...