Tag Archives: Jane Austen

SISTER SCRIBES: CASS GRAFTON ON THE ENDURING APPEAL OF DARCY

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As the 18th century drew to a close, a young Jane Austen was busy writing the first draft of a novel called First Impressions.

A parson’s daughter, she was growing up in the country idyll of rural Steventon, Hampshire, surrounded by a lively and intelligent family. As the new century dawned, however, Austen’s life underwent significant change, and it was 1812 before she put the finishing touches to First Impressions, now renamed Pride & Prejudice (publishing it in January 1813).

In There’s Something About Darcy, Dr Gabrielle Malcolm delves with a steady hand into how Pride & Prejudice’s hero, Fitzwilliam Darcy, has endured across the centuries, inspired other writers and why he continues to hold such appeal (and not just for those who adore Colin Firth’s visual interpretation and that infamous wet shirt scene).

The opening chapters begin with a fascinating and insightful look at the progression of Darcy’s interest in Elizabeth Bennet. Malcolm’s exploration of the confusion and contradiction of Darcy’s feelings is both fun to read and enlightening. This is a thorough analysis of the man and what he is experiencing, and those who love getting inside Darcy’s head will relish these chapters.

Subsequent chapters go on to examine in great depth how Jane Austen’s depiction of Darcy has influenced other writers – even those who were not known for admiring Austen’s works. Well-researched and informative chapters explore and analyse Darcy’s descendants across the nineteenth century, through to the Regency romances, on into the twentieth century and onwards to the present day.

There’s a fabulous chapter about Darcy on screen, exploring the various adaptations and Malcolm’s in-depth study will delight fans of any or all of these productions, from Laurence Oliver, David Rintoul, Colin Firth and Matthew Macfadyen’s more ‘traditional’ – I use the word loosely – interpretations to the more diverse eg Elliot Cowan’s in Lost in Austen and Sam Riley in Pride, Prejudice & Zombies.

A further chapter probes the interest in and fascination for ‘more’ Darcy, with an endless stream of Pride & Prejudice-inspired prequels, sequels and what ifs out there, and more coming every day, from the many authors (and for the many readers) who just can’t get enough of Darcy. This includes well-established authors not normally known for writing Austen-inspired works, from re-writes of Austen’s classics by eg Joanna Trollope and Curtis Sittenfeld, re-imaginations such as Longbourn by Jo Baker, to Death Comes to Pemberley, a ‘what-if sequel’ from the pen of P D James.

The final chapter is fittingly called ‘Unwavering, Enduring: Darcy – a hero for all time’, touching upon the more recent incarnations, from Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’ Diary series, the time-travel escapism of Lost in Austen and onwards to Bernie Su’s award-winning YouTube adaptation, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries.

As Malcolm says in her book, ‘Darcy as the influence for other prominent writers cements his significance further in a commercial and cultural context.’

It seems extremely fitting that a character from a book with the working title of First Impressions has left such a lasting impression upon generation after generation of writers and readers.

A must-have for any dedicated Jane Austen fan, Dr Gabrielle Malcolm’s There’s Something About Darcy is an informative, fascinating read, and I highly recommend it.

 

There’s Something About Darcy is available for pre-order through this link: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Theres-Something-About-Darcy-bewitching/dp/1911445561/

Dr Gabrielle Malcolm is a freelance writer and artist. She edited ‘Fan Phenomena: Jane Austen’ (Intellect Books), wrote three plays for Moon On A Stick children’s theatre company, and writes scripts for web series and short films for international clients. Her forthcoming non-fiction book, ‘There’s Something About Darcy’, is released on 11th November 2019 with Endeavour Quill.

 

SISTER SCRIBES GUEST: ALEXA ADAMS ON THE GIFT OF TRUST

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Meet Alexa, a fellow writer and Jane Austen fan who’s become a trusted friend and needs no better introduction than that.

 

For most of my life, I did not have many female friends. As the only child of a woman who prized sincerity above all else, many of the unwritten rules of girlhood were lost on me, and I often said things that offended others, never really understanding why what I perceived as honesty provoked such backlash. I was occasionally bullied, and the lesson I took away from those experiences was not to trust women professing friendship. Apart from a few, lifelong attachments, my friends were always mostly men. As I grew older and got married, this became more isolating. Inevitably, I would find myself at parties grouped together with a bunch of other women, nervously tottering through conversations, struggling to get through the evening without trespassing on those invisible boundaries established so many years ago on the playground.

I was often depressed in my 20s, but I had no idea the lack of a female support group contributed to the problem. I thought my career in sales and marketing was the driving issue. I wanted more purpose and independence, and in a leap of faith I am still amazed my husband supported, I quit my job to write. This was a whim; I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. It was other women writers who showed me my path through their guidance, support, and acceptance.

I truly was shocked by the kindness of the woman writers I met. I didn’t expect it, and it took me a long to time to trust it. I hid for years behind my pen name, using it as an excuse to keep all my authorly interactions online, dreading having to explain to someone I had now known for years that no, Alexa is not my real name, though my middle name is Alexandra, while I simply appropriated Adams from a few notable figures in US history. Perhaps by not acknowledging my real identity earlier in my relationships with these women, I had once again trod on one of those unspoken laws of female friendship?

Cass Grafton, the Sister Scribe who invited me to contribute these thoughts, was one of the first fellow writers whom I revealed my true identity to, and she took it in such stride that it taught me how paranoid I had been behaving. In the few years since, so many of my online relationships have been solidified into real-world friendships. My network of women who I can depend on, confide in, and trust has exploded, and I have a hard time recalling how I ever got by without them. These friendships are the most unexpected gift that writing has bestowed on me, and for them I am immeasurably grateful.

 

Biographical Info:

A devoted reader of Jane Austen since her childhood, Alexa Adams is the author of several Austenesque novels and short stories including Being Mrs. Bennet, Darcy in Wonderland, The Madness of Mr. Darcy, and Tales of Less Pride and Prejudice. Alexa is an American residing in Switzerland with her husband, daughter, and son. She blogs about Austen and Austenesque literature at alexaadams.blogspot.com, is a contributing member of AustenAuthors.net, and a founding member of the Jane Austen Society of Switzerland.

 

SISTER SCRIBES: CASS GRAFTON ON HOW 200 YEAR OLD SISTER SCRIBES HELPED FIND A CHARACTER

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Writers have various ways of defining the characters in their books. When one of your characters is, or was, a real person, however, surely it’s so much easier?

Well, that depends on whether you’re sensible and choose someone about whom there is a wealth of fact available, along with authenticated portraits or photographs. If you’re not sensible, and I’m sure you can tell where this is going, it’s not quite so easy.

I co-write with my friend, Ada Bright, and because we have to ensure we’re imagining our characters with the same face and figure, we usually turn to the great Oracle that is Google Images for their appearance. This works brilliantly, unless your character is Jane Austen.

There are a few portraits that claim to be of Jane, but only one showing her face is authenticated. It’s a small pencil and watercolour drawing by her sister, Cassandra, and said by one of Jane’s nieces to be ‘hideously unlike’, whilst others claimed ‘perhaps it gave some idea of the truth’. Faint praise indeed.

Needless to say, as the only authenticated image, it has been widely used, mainly in an increasingly prettified form over the years, most recently on the new ten-pound note.

We were left, therefore, with written accounts of Jane Austen’s appearance. These vary in the eyes of the source, but there are some common similarities: she was tall and slender, her brunette hair was long but cut short around the face to form curls, as was the fashion at the time, and she had hazel eyes, full cheeks and a clear complexion.

This helps our imagined physical manifestation of Jane. But what about her personality?

One of her brothers, Frank, then Admiral Francis Austen, wrote of her in 1852:

‘She was cheerful, not easily irritated, a little shy with strangers. Her natural reserve was sometimes misinterpreted as haughtiness. She was kind and funny, never failing to excite “the mirth and hilarity of the party”.’

Letters, therefore, became our best source. Jane and her beloved elder sister, Cassandra were incredibly close. Even as a child, their mother claimed that ‘if Cassandra were going to have her head cut off, Jane would insist on sharing her fate’.

Jane and Cassandra enjoyed a healthy correspondence when apart. Although we can ‘hear’ Jane’s voice through the characters of her novels, in her correspondence she is very much herself: open and honest, her wit to the fore, and clearly set upon entertaining her sister even as she wrote about mundane things such as the weather, the neighbours and the price of bread, including:

‘Next week I shall begin operations on my hat, on which you know my principal hopes of happiness depend.’ (1798)

‘I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.’ (1798)

‘I will not say that your mulberry trees are dead but I am afraid they are not alive.’ (1811)

‘He has but one fault, which time will, I trust, entirely remove – it is that his morning coat is a great deal too light.’ (1796)

‘She looks remarkably well (legacies are very wholesome diet)…’ (1808)

Although Cassandra destroyed many of Jane’s letters shortly before her own death, we are grateful to her for passing so many on to family members. It is thanks to her that we were able to develop Jane’s character, and we hope we did her wit and zest for life justice in our books.

 

Sources: Jane Austen’s Letters (4th Edition – 2011), collected and edited by Deirdre le Faye; A Memoir of Jane Austen, by James Edward Austen-Leigh (1870)

 

 

SISTER SCRIBES: APRIL READING ROUND UP

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Susanna:

Have you ever read a book that was so good that, while you looked forward to reading more by the same author, at the same time you couldn’t help feeling a bit wary of doing so – you know, in case the next book didn’t live up to expectations..? For me, psychological thriller writer Linda Huber is one of these writers. Since reading The Cold Cold Sea, I’ve never been able to open another of her books without that little iffy moment of wariness.

Linda Huber’s strength lies in her ability to build a creepy atmosphere that creates a thread that runs throughout each book, growing stronger the further you get into the plot. Her latest book, Stolen Sister, is billed as a ‘gripping family drama,’ but it is much more than this. It is a well-crafted, psychologically complex story that is fueled by strong characterisation. It is a chilling tale of ordinary people in what they gradually realise is an extraordinary situation and I wanted to reach inside the story and tell them what was really going on. A thoroughly gripping read.

 

Jane:

The first of my holiday reads followed me around for a while after I’d finished it – always a sign of a great book as far I as was concerned.

I was absolutely fascinated by the premise of Julie Cohen’s Louis and Louise; one life lived twice in a different gender. As well as being a satisfying story it made me think long and hard about gender identity and how it is shaped from childhood and the choices we make – often unwittingly – because of it.

Julie Cohen is a great storyteller and the small town in Maine where most of the book is set came to life in her skilled hands. It takes Louis and Louise from birth until their early thirties, flashing between the present and the defining moments of their childhoods. I found their relationship with their twin friends (a boy and a girl) echoed their own gender identities beautifully.

One thing that jarred a little was the few paragraphs – one quite early on – where the author ‘stepped in’ and explained to the reader what was happening and this really wasn’t necessary.  To me it smacked of over zealous editing on the part of the publisher and was quite annoying being treated like an idiot. Otherwise a great book I’d thoroughly recommend.

Also on holiday I struggled through Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility (sorry Cass!), mainly for research purposes, and read Angela Barton’s Magnolia House. This romance has received a ton of five star reviews and tells the story of Rowan, whose life spins apart just after she moves to London and how her new housemates and old friends help her to pull it back together.

But my most amazing holiday read of all was Madeleine Bunting’s Island Song. I’m a fussy reader at the best of times, but this marvellous novel drew me in right at the beginning and held me there until the end. The writing is so natural, so clever, I don’t even really know why it is so effective, but it carried me into a world of wartime Guernsey and 1990s London I was reluctant to leave.

The premise is not an original one; mysterious mother dies leaving daughter to uncover the truth about her life, but the richness of the storytelling and the layers of complexity made it an absolute joy to read. Easily my book of the year so far and I recommend it without reservation.

 

INTRODUCING SISTER SCRIBES: CASSANDRA GRAFTON

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The first Sister Scribe I have pleasure in introducing is Cassandra Grafton. Cass currently splits her time between Switzerland, where she lives with her husband, and England where she lives with her characters. She loves travelling, words, cats and wine, and the Sister Scribes love the Swiss chocolate she so generously shares with us.

Hello! I’m delighted to be part of this exciting new venture with my Sister Scribes here at Frost Magazine!

A proud bookworm since childhood, I try to write the sort of stories I love to read – heart-warming, character driven and strong on location. Having moved around extensively and lived in three countries, I find places inspiring and the setting of my novels often becomes as much a part of the story as the characters.

I’ve been reflecting on the writers who have influenced both my reading habits and writing inspirations, and most of them have been women. My early years were spent devouring the novels of Enid Blyton, especially her boarding school stories. I’ve never been to boarding school, but it all seemed such fun, with midnight feasts and lashings of ginger beer! I think what also drew me to her stories was that she gave her lead characters some flaws, and I took comfort from the fact that sometimes it was okay to get it wrong.

When I reached my teens, romance took over, from the wild passion of the Brontës to the more gentle romance of Mills & Boon, all of which I consumed avidly. I fell in love with Mr Darcy and Captain Wentworth. I moved onto that early pioneer of chick-lit, Jilly Cooper, loving the humour she brought to her stories, then to Marion Keyes and Anna Maxted – real laugh out loud stories that also moved me to tears, turning occasionally to Daphne du Maurier for a dash of suspense. The final influence on my tastes came a little later, in the form of JK Rowling and her Harry Potter series.

It was both the latter and my love for all things Austen that eventually led to turning my long-held dreams of being a writer into reality.

I met a Californian (Ada Bright) on a Forum online and we both decided to try our hand at co-writing fan fiction, firstly around the Potter universe and later dabbling with Austen’s characters – it was fun, rewarding and a great way to hone our writing skills.

Eventually, I decided to publish some of these endeavours before Ada and I settled down to co-write The Particular Charm of Miss Jane Austen, which has since been picked up by Canelo Digital Publishing and will be released in September, with a sequel following in November.

It’s true to say that Jane Austen has, therefore, been the biggest influence of all those women writers. It feels apt that Chawton House in Hampshire, located in the village where Jane Austen was living when she published her first four novels, a secondary home of her brother, Edward (Austen) Knight, now houses a library dedicated to early editions of works by women, mostly within the period 1600-1830, a unique collection of women’s writing.

The historic setting of the house brings to life the context within which women writers lived and worked. The diversity of women’s writing during this period is displayed through novels, poetry, drama, published letters and memoirs on a whole range of subjects including history, travel, medicine, botany, cookery and more.

I’m looking forward to working with my fellow Sister Scribes over the coming year as we share our thoughts and experiences with you and introduce you to some of the key women writers in our lives.

Source: Chawton House website (https://chawtonhouse.org)

 

Follow Cassandra on social media @CassGrafton on Twitter or on Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/cassie.grafton

BUSINESS OF BOOKS: FIRST, LAST, EVERYTHING – ROMANCE AUTHOR CASSANDRA GRAFTON

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What was the first writing advice you were ever given?

If I think back to when I started to seriously consider writing full-length stories, the first piece of advice I recall was ‘just keep putting the words on the page’. After all, you can’t polish and edit a blank page, can you?

At the time, I’d only ever completed short stories, mostly co-written, for online communities. A solo writing project was a challenge in itself, but I didn’t really think of it as ‘writing a novel’ because of the serial nature of posting online.

It was the encouragement (and above advice) from those communities that helped me to get started, and it’s down to their on-going support and feedback that I managed to keep going, no matter what life threw at me. I just kept putting one word after the other, until eventually I’d finished telling the story I wanted to share.

 

Photo copyright is Adrea Scheidler Photography

What was the most recent writing advice you were given?

I follow a lot of writing blogs on Twitter, and many of them have wonderful snippets of advice, one of the most practical of which in recent months was about removing redundant words from your manuscript.

I discovered there were plenty of lists out there, once I’d put ‘redundant words in your novel’ into Google, and soon I was working my way through my extremely long manuscript and culling them (thank you, Word, for the Search and Replace function). In the end, nearly 10,000 redundant words sailed off into the blue yonder; not one of them was missed!

It turns out, however, that my biggest overuse of anything is not a specific word, but a punctuation mark. It was pointed out to me at a writing retreat last year that I need to ‘kill the exclamation mark.’ When I looked into it, I was appalled by how often I used them. I did, indeed, have a bit of a fetish going on. Hopefully, I’ve managed to keep them to a minimum in this blog post!

 

What is the piece of advice you’d most like to pass on?

There are variations on these words, but it boils down “don’t wait for your boat to come in; row out to meet it”.

It’s something I wish I’d taken on-board (if you’ll excuse the pun) earlier in my life. It can, of course, relate to all aspects of life, but with regard to my writing, it translates into this: Don’t let time slip away from you.

I’d wanted to write all my life, but always I made excuses: “no time, children to look after, piles of marking to get through, got to work late, too tired”. Even when the children were teenagers and didn’t need the same level of attention, even when I had an unexpected year of not having to work full time, always I seemed to have an excuse for actually sitting down and doing it.

I was 50 before the realisation struck that I needed to heed this advice – when it almost felt too late. I’d had a recent run-in with cancer, which led to a couple of rather unpleasant years, and as my milestone birthday approached, I started to re-evaluate my life. If I didn’t get my act together and produce a book sometime soon, perhaps I would never fulfil my lifelong dream?

It would be another year (2013) before I finally took the plunge into publishing my first novel. The story had been seven years in the making, for all the aforementioned reasons, but I did it.

It had still been a challenge. I was working full time, long hours, and any writing time was limited to weekends and holidays (thankfully I have a very patient and supportive husband, who would hoover around my chair at weekends as I sat at the computer, or read the paper in a pub when we were on holiday as I scribbled away at scenes in my notebook).

In more recent years, having moved to Switzerland and no longer having a day job, I have had the time to write, but still I procrastinate. My New Year’s Resolution this year was to treat my writing like a job, not a hobby, and I’m improving, but there’s a way to go yet.

So please don’t do as I do, do as I say: don’t let the time slip away from you!

 

Cassandra has published two historical romances and has co-written and published a contemporary cosy mystery/romance. She is currently working on a series of contemporary feel-good romances set in Cornwall. She loves traveling, reading, cats and dry wine and splits her time between Switzerland, where she lives with her husband, and England, where she lives with her characters.

 

https://cassandragrafton.com

Month 4 of My Reading Challenge by Frances Colville

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Rather slim pickings this month, partly because some of the books I chose took time to read and think about, and partly because it’s been a busy month anyway and time for reading has been in short supply.

First, to tie in with my plan to read some less current books this month, I picked up Persuasion by Jane Austen (my copy Wordsworth Classic 2000).  I’ve been intending to re-read it for some time because I live near Lyme Regis where parts of the book are set.  And then to my surprise I found that I hadn’t actually read it before.  What a treat!  So I took my time and reveled in every page, and then felt bereft when I’d finished it.

Month 4 of my reading challenge by Frances Colville1janeausten

Next something completely different.  A book called Nothing To Envy: Real Lives in North Korea (Granta Books 2010) recommended by a member of one of my book groups.  The author Barbara Demick is an American journalist who has spent many years living in South Korea and China.  Getting accurate and credible information about what daily life is actually like for North Koreans is almost impossible.  But she managed it by interviewing dozens of defectors currently living in South Korea and then focusing on the life stories of six of them.  The result is a well written and readable book which is both informative, believable and harrowing in the extreme.  Before I read it, I  had not fully understood just how repressive a society this is, and I certainly hadn’t appreciated the extent of isolation and the horrors of famine and poverty which the people of North Korea endure.  For me, this is one of those books everyone should read. And it reminded me of other books I now want to look at again – The Siege by Helen Dunmore (a novel set during the siege of Leningrad), If This Is A Man by Primo Levy (depicting his life in Auschwitz) and of course George Orwell’s 1984.  My list grows ever longer!

reading, book, book review

I needed a bit of light relief after that so I turned to the latest Katie Fforde book to appear in paperback – The Perfect Match (Arrow books 2014).  An easy read and very enjoyable, as are all her books (and yes – I have read them all), but I wonder if I’m alone in preferring her earlier books which just seem to have a bit more substance?  Not that I will let that stop me reading her next – and the one after that!

3bookreviewkatiefforde

My final choice for this month has been Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd (my copy is Macmillan Papermac 1969).  Like many of my generation, I first encountered Hardy novels at school and distinctly remember preferring The Trumpet Major because it was short!  But Far From the Madding Crowd wasn’t far behind in my estimation.  Many years later I came to live in Dorset and have enjoyed visiting Hardy’s Cottage and Max Gate, his home in later years.  A couple of weeks ago I was lucky enough to get a ticket for the preview of the new Far From the Madding Crowd film and spent a wonderful evening at the Electric Palace in Bridport enjoying both the film itself and the delights of spotting familiar locations.  The new adaptation is an excellent one in my opinion.  But having seen it, I felt the need to return to my copy of the book and check out the accuracy of the film.  And of course to appreciate anew Hardy’s wonderfully poetic language, his portrayal of the countryside I love and above all his ability as a story teller.  Both book and film highly recommended.

book, book reviews,

So that’s it for another month.  And now time to think what I want to read next.  It’s not easy to choose.

 

 

Mansfield Park Still Least Favourite Jane Austen Novel After 200 Years

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Mansfield Park attracted just two per cent of votes in a poll.

Some things change, but sadly for celebrated author Jane Austen some things don’t.

A new survey by book recommendation website LoveReading.co.uk has found that 200 years on from its publication in May 1814, Mansfield Park is still Austen’s least-liked novel.

jane-austen-least favourite novel

The novel garnered just two per cent of a poll to find readers’ favourite Austen book.

The outright winner – with nearly 60 per cent of the vote – was Pride and Prejudice – the tale of manners, upbringing, morality, education, and marriage that featured the iconic Mr Darcy.

Second most-popular was Jane Austen’s first novel, Sense and Sensibility, followed in third place by her fourth book, Emma – the last to be published while she was still alive.

Peter Crawshaw, Director and Co-Founder of Lovereading.co.uk said “Since its first publication 200 years ago, Mansfield Park has always been a divisive novel — the Jane Austen equivalent of Marmite.

“But least liked doesn’t necessarily mean worst and even though the Pygmalion morality epic that is Mansfield Park doesn’t have the glamorous appeal of Pride and Prejudice it certainly has some resonance today.

“Perhaps it just needs a Hollywood makeover to finally get a popularity boost.”

Mansfield Park is noted for being the most controversial of Austen’s major novels

Published in May 1814, her third novel was praised by Regency critics for its “wholesome morality”, but has since earned the dubious distinction of being the most disliked among Jane Austen fans.

Many readers find the book’s protagonist, Fanny Price, too “timid” and “priggish” to be likeable, for example, with Jane Austen’s own mother, Cassandra, herself complaining that Fanny was “insipid”.

Heated debates about the novel’s literary worth have even spawned so-called ‘Fanny Wars’ on internet discussion forums.

Crawshaw added: “Discussions between Austen fans often get heated while discussing the literary value of Mansfield Park.

“Mansfield Park is quite a complex work in comparison to Pride and Prejudice or Sense and Sensibility, and this often puts readers off, as does the unsympathetic lead character, Fanny,”

Jane Austen, who lived from 1775 to 1817, is regarded as one of English literature’s greatest authors.

Her novels include Emma, Pride and Prejudice, and Sense and Sensibility.

The Bank of England has announced that it will feature Austen’s face on £10 notes from 2017.