Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘SourceBooks’

Mrs. Elton in America: Interview With Diana Birchall, Author

Posted in Book review, jane austen, Jane Austen Sequels, tagged , , , on September 2, 2008| 3 Comments »

On her website, Diana Birchall discusses how she began writing Mrs. Elton in America, originally entitled In Defense of Mrs. Elton.

In Defense of Mrs. Elton had an interesting evolution. It began as an internet serial told on the Janeites online literary list. The group was discussing this obnoxious character from Jane Austen’s Emma, and I undertook to defend her. My defense took the form of a serial story, told in eleven parts over the period of about a month, and the response from the geographically far-flung, but intellectually close-knit Janeites community was startling…All three “Mrs. Elton” stories are collected in the volume, Mrs. Elton in America.

Vic: Diana, I am so pleased to learn that SourceBooks has published your book, Mrs. Elton in America, a comedic novel, in which, as the publisher says, Mrs. Elton crosses the Atlantic Ocean with her caro sposo and children and enjoys high comedic adventures in Boston and New York society. She also visits a Southern slave state, and dwells among the Comanche Indians. Goodness, but Mrs. Elton gets around!

Diana: Thank you! Well, if even a quarter of those things happened, Mrs. Elton would surely be the talk of Highbury, wouldn’t she? It’s not a place where there’s a tremendous amount of action going on. Yet Mrs. Elton is an energetic character. I felt she could use a greater scope for her activity, and it might even be beneficial for her, and improve her faults. (I know more travel would definitely improve mine…)

Vic: I’ve already written about your delight with the book’s cover , which is very lovely AND lively, but I’m sure the readers of this blog are curious to learn more.

Diana: About the cover painting: I was browsing through an online gallery of the luminous, exquisite portraits by 18th century French woman artist Vigee LeBrun – a real pleasure – want to see the site? Here it is: http://www.batguano.com/vigee.html – and one face popped out at me. Remember when Jane Austen was in a gallery and “found” the portrait of Mrs. Bingley? In my less exalted case, I saw a face that said “Mrs. Elton” to me. Sort of a vulgar expression, and an over-gaudy costume. It turned out to be the Duchesse de Berry, but never mind! An earlier version of the book used a cowgirl picture, but that was never right. Now it’s right! (That is, if you think the Duchesse de Berry is Mrs. Elton. Oh well, if I’m deluded, don’t let me wake.)

Vic: Let’s face it, Mrs. Elton, though a memorable character, is not one of Jane Austen’s most beloved creations. Why concentrate on her? Why not write more about Jane Fairfax or Mary Crawford, for example?

Diana: In the first place, Mrs. Elton is funny! A character people love to hate, with a decided and distinct personality. I could never see writing about Jane Fairfax, she’s so…limp and repressed, I’ve never warmed to her. Mary Crawford, yes; a splendid wily witty Lady Susan-esque heroine. However, I identified with Mrs. Elton long ago, and there’s no help for it. She seems to have become my fate. (As Anne Elliot says in Persuasion, “It is not a very enviable one; you need not covet it.”) You know, the first time I read Emma, I couldn’t even see what was so awful about Mrs. Elton, why everyone in Highbury thought she was so dreadful. I grew up in New York and brash pushy behavior was what one saw every day, so Mrs. Elton only seemed normal! Gradually, of course, on successive re-readings, I learned to understand her social crimes, but I also found that her behavior was, in many ways, no more reprehensible than Emma’s own. The difference lies in Jane Austen’s editorial point of view, how she presents the two characters. At every opportunity she signals to us that Mrs. Elton is inappropriate, vulgar, striving for effect in her manipulations, while Emma is only young and mistaken in hers. When I wrote the first Mrs. Elton story, “In Defense of Mrs. Elton,” I came to see her side of things – that it was possible to sympathize with her, as a stranger, an outsider, so roundly and rapidly rejected by Emma, the Queen of Highbury society where she was going to live for the rest of her life.

Vic: Tell me about the impetus to write the book. Why did you decide to take the Elton family to America?

Diana: The impetus was that I’ve always been interested in transatlantic stories. Stories where an American character goes to England (as in some of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s books, for example – The Shuttle, or A Fair Barbarian), or where an English character goes to America. My main inspiration was Frances Trollope’s famous memoir, Domestic Manners of the Americans, which is jaw-droppingly brilliant journalism. Frances Trollope, Anthony Trollope’s mother, an excellent, spirited narrator and vigorous personality, went to America in the 1820s (just when Mrs. Elton would have) and wrote a vividly observed, yet extremely condescending and sarcastic description of the coarse Americans. Her viewpoint of the Americans influenced visiting authors’ attitudes ever since – I believe until this day. And I thought, what if Mrs. Elton traveled to America the way Mrs. Trollope did – what would she think of it, what would the Americans think of her, what sort of adventures would she have, how would she be changed? It just seemed like a funny idea.

Vic: You had researched Mrs. Darcy’s Dilemma extensively and worked hard on finding Jane Austen’s voice in your writing. Was the process easier with Mrs. Elton?

Diana: I’d read Jane Austen thousands of times, poring over each sentence and its beauty and balance and structure, by the time I wrote Mrs. Darcy’s Dilemma. I wanted it to be a beautiful book. I was less concerned with beauty when I started writing (or, let’s face it, “being”) Mrs. Elton. She is comedic and crass and not exquisite. Besides, by then I had developed some facility in writing in pseudo-early 19th century style. I found I could rather alarmingly snap myself into being her, and write *as* her. We are, regrettably, so very alike, after all…

Vic: Tell us a little about your writing process. Up at the crack of dawn, or writing late into the evening? Disciplined, or waiting for inspiration?

Diana: Waiting for inspiration, and when I get an inspiration, then I am driven and determined and disciplined, and just barrel away at a thing until it’s done, using every spare moment of free time. But I don’t get inspirations very often (grin).

Vic: I find your day job of reading scripts for a major movie studio fascinating. Care to share some of the details with the public?

Diana Birchall in Vancouver

Diana Birchall in Vancouver

Diana: It’s always been the ideal job for me and I know I was very lucky to have found what Dorothy L. Sayers calls my “proper job,” early in life. I’ve worked in the movie business since the 1970s, when I moved out to California after graduating from college. I had a B.A. in English, a small child to support, and was doing temp jobs. Then an aunt suggested I look up my grandmother’s old literary agent. My grandmother, Onoto Watanna, was the first Asian American novelist (she was half Chinese; I’m half Jewish; too difficult to explain), and she’d had a career as a Hollywood screenwriter in the 1920s. Her agent, a perky little man with a bow tie, was still alive, though elderly, and he gave me some scripts to read. That’s how I started, and I became what’s called a story analyst – a studio reader. I’ve been at Warner Bros since 1991, where I’m the “book person,” reading novels. Although I’m on staff I work from home, and that, of course, is ideal for a writer. Also, the work is excellent in itself, because I’m forced to work on deadline, be disciplined and professional, and turn out serviceable analytical prose every day. Very good training. As for the job itself, it’s something I have always loved doing – after thirty years I’ve never staled or got tired of it! I’m still excited each time I’m sent a new manuscript (they come via email now, which is fabulous; years ago I had to drive out to Burbank to pick up work). I love to read more than anything else in the world anyway, and even if a book isn’t one I might have chosen to read myself, I love to analyze and dissect them. And most of the books are popular novels of fairly high quality; I actually do enjoy most of them. When I don’t, I get through them quickly but professionally: you do develop the ability to read extremely fast after doing this for three decades. So It’s been a good career for me. Would I recommend it to people starting out? Not really. You see, the business is changing, with all the new technologies, and no one’s really sure which way things are going. I’m not sure it’s possible to make a career as a studio reader anymore; the system is dying out. There’ll be some new way of “covering” material, but it’s not clear yet what that will be.

Vic: Anything else you’d care to share with our readers?

Diana: Just that Jane Austen has been my teacher, my solace, my amuser, my inspiration, and my study. As Cassandra called her, “the sun of my life, the gilder of every pleasure.”

Vic: Thank you, Diana. As always your thoughts are so illuminating. You must be pleased with some of the reviews, like Ellen Moody’s, who called your book “a polished performance,” or Maggie Lane’s, who said, “It’s a delight to meet with old friends in new situations. America, where everything is bigger and better, is just the setting for the obnoxious but hugely entertaining Augusta Elton.”

Diana: Indeed, some most esteemed people have said lovely things, and I have been very pleased! Only one reviewer missed the point, that it was supposed to be, you know, funny – but then, what is fun for some, is not fun for every one. One half of the world, as Emma said, does not understand the pleasures of the other.

Vic: I can only add, good luck with the novel Diana. Two books published in one year! You must be proud.

  • Click here for the archives to Mrs. Elton’s current project, her weekly advice column on Jane Austen Today.

Read Full Post »

Lady of Quality: Georgette Heyer

Posted in Bath, Book review, Georgette Heyer, Regency World, tagged , , , on June 1, 2008| 37 Comments »

Miss Annis Wychwood, at twenty-nine, has long been on the shelf, but this bothers her not at all. She is rich and still beautiful and she enjoys living independently in Bath, except for the tiresome female cousin, who her very proper brother insists must live with her.

When Annis offers sanctuary to the very young runaway heiress Miss Lucilla Carleton, no one at all thinks this is a good idea. With the exception of Miss Carleton’s overbearing guardian, Mr. Oliver Carleton, whose reputation as the rudest man in London precedes him. Outrageous as he is, the charming Annis ends up finding him absolutely irresistible. – Sourcebooks blurb

I discovered Georgette Heyer just after I graduated from college. Having run out of new Jane Austen novels to read, I began to search for other regency stories set in similar settings. One day at the library, I stumbled across Charity Girl and Arabella, and my love affair with all things Georgette began.

In those days I was barely older than the youngest of Heyer’s heroines, and could identify closely with The Grand Sophy. I reveled in Georgette’s world filled with bored aristocratic gentlemen who, usually as they traveled by coach or horse to a country inn or walked the streets in London in the middle of the night, stumbled across an innocent and disarming chit who needed rescuing. This plot device was a popular one with the author. Another one of Georgette’s plots was that of the “older” beautiful, rich, and independent spinster (almost on the shelf, but not quite) who is determined to live her life as she likes it and skirt convention when she can. Because she has independent means, she rules her roost and will brook no interference from any man. Invariably, these strong willed women meet their match in an even richer, stronger-willed man, usually a Duke or Earl, but not always as in a Lady of Quality.

I learned about Bath through Georgette Heyer’s eyes, not Jane Austen’s. Oh, Jane mentioned Molland’s on Milsom Street, and her characters take the waters in the Pump Room and attend assembly balls in the Upper and Lower Rooms. But Jane is spare in her descriptions, and could barely be bothered to describe dresses, fripperies, and interiors, or how well a man’s broad shoulders fit into his tailored coat, or that his valet polishes his tasseled Wellington boots with champagne. Georgette revels in these descriptions, and takes them to the extreme. Her characters are rather shallow and predictable, and she uses the same “type” over and over again. However, one doesn’t read a Georgette Heyer novel to learn something new and wondrous about the human character – one reads her stories to learn about Regency manners and mores, and how bored the aristocrats are with their privileged lifestyles, and about carriage rides in Hyde Park, and intrigues in Bath, and elopements to Gretna Green, and for descriptions of satin ball gowns and sprigged muslin day dresses. Georgette’s world is filled with high perch phaetons, and visits to Gentleman Jackson’s salon and Astley’s Amphitheatre, and a night at the opera. When I think of Georgette’s descriptions of matrons, I think of formidable ladies dressed in puce and ostrich feathers, bosoms heaving, and faces pinched with displeasure. Or I think of an older, fluffier, high maintenance woman dressed too young for her age, wearing too many ruffles, always fainting or expostulating about something inconsequential, and driving everyone but our heroine to distraction.

Jane Austen’s novels are meaty and take a long time to digest; Georgette’s frothy, sparkling, and often funny romances are as light and sugary as a meringue, and just as filling, which is to say that one becomes hungry to read more after having just finished the previous book. I have read all of Georgette’s regency romances, but I can barely recall one plot from the other, whereas Jane’s six novels are different and distinct. There is no confusing Persuasion with Pride and Prejudice!


To give Georgette her due, she KNOWS her stuff. Not only was her own “breeding” impeccable, but she married well. She and her husband rented rooms in a grand house in Mayfair, and they knew London inside and out. Georgette visited museums, and filled her notebooks (right) with drawings of costumes, uniforms, carriages, and the like. One of the characteristic that sets Georgette’s books apart from all other romance novels is her use of language and aristocratic cant. She made up many of her phrases, including “A Banbury Tale,” but they sound so authentic that other authors began to copy her, much to her dismay. A frustrated historian, who yearned to be recognized for her serious historical novels, she lived long enough to see her regency romances take off in popularity, and printed in many languages all over the world. Her artist of choice for her hard cover book jackets was Barbosa, (illustration of second book cover) whose talent for portraying the regency world was incomparable.

Georgette and her husband rented space in Albany House in Mayfair, London for 24 years. Turned into bachelor chambers in the early 19th century, its famous renters included Lord Byron and Lord Macaulay.

Georgette is a sweet romance writer, which means that she writes no X-rated sex scenes. In fact, she writes no sex scenes at all. Her characters might kiss and hug, but that is towards the end of the story to seal the deal. Unfortunately, Georgette’s light-hearted books have inspired other, lesser writers, like Barbara Cartland, whose awful repetitive romances about barely post-pubescent heroines with heart-shaped faces and huge liquid eyes are barely digestible. Writers like Cartland have given the entire genre a bad name. As with all genre writers, there are good ones and bad ones. Georgette’s works stand out as among the best. Having said that, her plots about 18-year-old misses catching the interest of 38-year-old dukes attract me the least. When I was young I could barely stomach the age difference, and now that I am longer in the tooth and a tad world weary, I refuse to read them. However, her novels about the older feisty heroine of independent means verbally sparring with her hero still strike my fancy.

Which brings me to the real topic of this post: a review. If you haven’t read a Georgette Heyer book, and you are of a certain age, I would like to recommend that you first read a Lady of Quality, which combines both of Georgette’s two basic plots. The book starts predictably, with our older, stubborn heroine, Miss Annis Wychwood, who has set up her own house in Bath (in a fashionable part of town, of course), returning from a visit with her brother and sister-in-law.  Her chaperone is a meek mannered spinster cousin, who doesn’t dare to cross her rich patroness, which is exactly how Annis had planned it. The hero of the story is Oliver Carleton, the uncle and legal guardian of a silly chit, (Lucilla) who has run away. Annis becomes her protector, which sets up frequent opportunities for Annis and Oliver to verbally spar with one another.

He came forward to shake hands with Miss Wychwood, paying no immediate heed to Lucilla, following her into the parlour. “You can’t think of how relieved I am to see that you haven’t brought your cousin with you,” he said, by way of greeting. “I have been cursing myself these three hours for not having made it plain to her that I was not including her in my invitation to you! I couldn’t have endured an evening spent in the company of such an unconscionable gabble-monger!”

“Oh, but you did!” she told him. “She took you in the greatest dislike, and can’t be blamed for having done so, or for having uttered some pretty sever strictures on your total want of conduct. You must own, if there is any truth in you, that you were shockingly uncivil to her!”

“I can’t tolerate chattering bores,” he said. “If she took me in such dislike, I’m amazed that she permitted you to come here without her chaperonage.”

“She would certainly have stopped me if she could have done it, for she does not think you are a proper person for me to know!”

“Good God! Does she suspect me of trying to seduce you? She may be easy on that head: I never seduce ladies of quality!” He turned from her as he spoke, and put up his glass to cast a critical look over Lucilla. “Well, niece?” he said. “What a troublesome chit you are! But I’m glad to see that your appearance at least is much improved since I last saw you. I thought that you were bidding fair to grow into a Homely Joan, but I was wrong: your are no longer pudding-faced, and you’ve lost your freckles. Accept my felicitations!”

“I was not pudding-faced!”

“Oh, believe me, you were! You hadn’t lost your puppy-fat.”

Her bosom heaved with indignation, but Miss Wychwood intervened, recommending her not to rise to that, or any other fly of her uncle’s casting. She added severely: “And as for you, sir, I beg you will refrain from making any more remarks expressly designed to put Lucilla all on end, and to render me acutely uncomfortable!”

“I wouldn’t do that for the world,” he assured her.

“Then don’t be so rag-mannered!” she retorted.

An experienced reader of romance novels can divine the plot from this short scene, in which Lucilla is induced to speak to her uncle after having run away from him. One thing leads to another, with many plot twists and misunderstandings and heaving of bosoms, until Georgette neatly ties up her various threads, and her hero and heroine live happily ever after. The author was nearly seventy years old when she sent this note to her publisher about the book’s progress:

“I’ve left [Carleton] making himself thoroughly obnoxious to Lord Beckenham in the Pump Room, and must go back to him, and think of a few more poisonously rude things for him to say…I have only to add that Mr. Carleton is not merely the rudest man in London, but has also the reputation of being a Sad Rake, to convince you that he has all the right ingredients of a Heyer-Hero.” (Hodge, p 196*)

SourceBooks is issuing a select number of Georgette Heyer novels in Trade Paper for the first time. Click here to enter the site and see the selections. If you find my description of the book intriguing, then you will not be disappointed reading it. Georgette’s breezy romances are a perfect accompaniment for a summer’s day at the beach or a relaxed afternoon in your lawn chair.

For additional information about Georgette Heyer, click on the links below:

  • *The Private World of Georgette Heyer, Jane Aiken Hodge, The Bodley Head, London, 1984. Quote and illustration of Heyer’s notebook and house are from this book.

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts