< I>A Great and Terrible Beauty< /I> is a curl-up-under-the-covers kind of book . . . a vast canvas of rustling skirts and dancing shadows and things that go bump in the night. It's a vividly drawn portrait of the Victorian age, a time of strict morality and barely repressed sensuality, when girls were groomed for lives as rich men's wives . . . and the story of a girl who saw another way.