"A Type of Beauty" is the dramatised account of the life of Kathleen Newton (1854-1882), whose intense affair with Jacques Tissot scandalised Victorian society. A sweeping story set in London, Agra, Bombay, and Paris, it brings to life the sights, scents, and emotional landscape of the Victorian era. When Kate Kelly, beautiful and feisty, travels to India to marry a man she has never seen, she thinks her life is over. But that is just the beginning. She ends up back in London with an unconsummated marriage, a pending divorce and pregnant by a man she despises. Despite the awfulness of her situation, she never loses hope of finding happiness, which she does in Paris on meeting sensual and mysterious French painter Jacques Tissot. Complications test their love for each other until destiny steps in.