What does it mean to live a "bohemian" life? Flamboyant Ida Nettleship gave up an artistic career to marry Augustus John. She lived with him and his mistress in a ménage ? trois, enduring five pregnancies in six years, and died exhausted in childbirth aged 30. Likewise Picasso's first love and muse Fernande Olivier had been prominent in the Paris art scene, while writer Sophie Brzeska lived with artist Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, nineteen years her junior, and after his death in World War I, she began her slow descent into mental instability. Literary historian Amy Licence follows the stories of three women who embraced unconventional lives and loves, and the huge influence each had on her more famous partner.