Author Archives: Janet Mullany

Interview and Giveaway with Shelley Munro

Updated on March 27, 2014 by Janet Mullany

Today we welcome Shelley Munro and her new release Mistress of Merrivale to the Riskies. Shelley is giving away two digital copies of one of her historical backlist books, and there are a zillion ways to enter (see below!)

A marriage of convenience…full of inconvenient secrets.
Jocelyn Townsend’s life as a courtesan bears no resemblance to the life she envisioned in girlish dreams. But it allows her and her eccentric mother to live in relative security—until her protector marries and no longer requires her services.

Desperate to find a new benefactor, one kind enough to accept her mother’s increasingly mad flights of fancy, Jocelyn is nearly overwhelmed with uncertainty when a lifeline comes from an unexpected source.

Leo Sherbourne’s requirements for a wife are few. She must mother his young daughter, run his household, and warm his bed. All in a calm, dignified manner with a full measure of common sense. After his late wife’s histrionics and infidelity, he craves a simpler, quieter life.

As they embark on their arrangement, Leo and Jocelyn discover an attraction that heats their bedroom and a mutual admiration that warms their days. But it isn’t long before gossip regarding the fate of Leo’s first wife, and his frequent, unexplained absences, make Jocelyn wonder if the secrets of Merrivale Manor are rooted in murder…

Warning: Contains mysterious incidents, a mad mother who screeches without provocation, scheming relatives, and a captivating husband who blows scorching hot and suspiciously cold. All is not as it seems…and isn’t that delicious?

OK, I’ll bite. Tell us about the screeching mother.

Thanks so much for having me to visit today.
Jocelyn’s mother has a form of dementia, a disease that would be diagnosed as Alzheimer’s during our modern times. Her memory is gradually going, and her behavior is becoming erratic. Jocelyn’s two older sisters want to send Elizabeth Townsend to Bedlam, but Jocelyn hates the thought of her mother in a place like that, and she takes measures to keep her remaining parent safe with her.
Elizabeth isn’t above screaming when she wants attention, and she screeches when she doesn’t get her way. She’s very trying at times, yet Jocelyn gets the odd glimpses of her mother of old and she keeps hoping her parent will improve. She never does.

You’ve written so many books and in so many subgenres–what got you into writing historicals?

My first love as a reader was always historical romances, but gradually I started reading other genres. Once I started writing, I followed the same path. I tend to get bored writing the same genre all the time. While this isn’t the best plan, I need to enjoy the process of writing too, hence my dipping into the historical romance arena.

I do have a super-secret idea for a new historical series, and I hope to start working on that later in the year.

What is it that attracts you about the Regency?

My favored period is actually the 18th century, which I like because I think they were a little naughtier than the Regency era. It was a time of great change, which makes it interesting, and lastly, I adore the clothes.

You have a courtesan heroine. How difficult was it to make this trope fresh?

I didn’t think about making the trope fresh. It was more a case of writing my heroine the way I thought she should be written, and my story, the Mistress of Merrivale, emerged. Can you tell I’m a pantser rather than a plotter?

What’s your favorite scene in the book?

I like the scene when Leo and Jocelyn have their first meal together after being reunited and consummate their marriage. They both want their marriage, and they’re attracted to each other, but everything is new and strange for both of them. This makes for fun scene as they learn about each other.

What was the most difficult part of the book to write?

When I first wrote this book it ended up at just over 50K words. I subbed it to one of my editors and received a rejection. I never give up, and I liked this story a lot. Since I was about to go on holiday, I set the story aside. On my return I reread it, and decided I needed more plot to make the story stronger and be true to my characters. In the end Mistress of Merrivale ended up at 86K words. Working out what to add and how to do it was the tough bit, but it was worth it. I’m pleased with the end result.

What are you working on right now?

I’m percolating my super-secret historical series idea in my head while I’m working on a sci-fi series which is contracted with another publisher. I’m busy writing the third book in this series and the words are stuck in a swamp in the depths of my brain. At least that’s what it feels like today!

What are you reading right now/last great book you read?

I’m listening to an audio book at present – Shades of Gray by Maya Banks. As for the last great book I read, I can’t tell you the name of the author or the title since it was one of the books I judged in the RITA. I love it when I discover new authors, especially if they come with a back list!

Your task: Enter the contest via the magic of Rafflecopter, or ask Shelley a question about her book, or, since she lives in New Zealand, you could ask her about, for instance, rugby players. Or Lord of the Rings. Or, share with us a new author you’ve discovered recently.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Posted in Giveaways, Guest, Interviews, Reading | Tagged Shelley Munro | 18 Replies

Trivialities and Austen stuff

Updated on March 20, 2014 by Janet Mullany

I went off to brainyhistory.com today to see what happened today a couple hundred of years ago, and the answer is, not much, or at least not much that interested me. A lot of obscure composers were born on this day. There are always a lot of obscure composers having birthdays.

Turning to the letters of Jane Austen–yes, good idea, let’s talk about Jane Austen–March was not a big letter writing month for her. Her letter of March 9, 1814 to Cassandra contains this sisterly gem:

If Cassandra has filled my Bed with fleas, I am sure they must bite herself.–

Cassandra got busy with the scissors on a letter of March 21 2014 to (maybe) Francis Austen but allowed this to remain:

Perhaps before the end of April, Mansfield Park by the author of S&S–P&P may be in the World.–Keep the name to yourself. I shd. not like to have it known beforehand.

Ah, those were the days. You could be all secretive about your impending release and even about your own identity. No facebook. No twitter. No wall to wall squeeing promo. Heaven.

I’ve been having a Jane Austen-ish time recently, doing what I swore I’d never do because there are too many polluting the world, experimenting with a P&P-based book. More about this darling child, maybe, later. I also went out to Minneapolis for a very short trip–Minneapolis in March, not so good–to talk to their JASNA chapter about Austen and servants. Fun, fast, furious, the weather cooperated, whew.

I also read S&S again. I’ve always thought that one of the wonderful things about Austen is that the books change for you every time, and sure enough, it was like reading a whole new book. I last read it in 2011 and this time I was very much aware of it being “about girls filling in their time waiting by the phone for unsatisfactory men who don’t respond in the right way.” (That was from a post I wrote in 2011 on the JASNA-AGM which was about S&S and hearing Andrew Davies talk about his Austen screenplays.) Because, sorry to say, other than being by Austen, it’s not a very good book. There are so many things in it that don’t work, principally Marianne, Elinor, and Edward.

But Mrs. Jennings. Oh gosh, I love Mrs. Jennings. This time around she was the heroine of the book for me. She’s fun. She’s lively. She isn’t afraid to tease Marianne about Willoughby while everyone else tiptoes around her, not daring to ask whether she’s engaged to him or not. And above all despite the meddling, grasping the wrong end of the stick (considerable), and gossip, she’s kind and loyal and sensible. She knows Marianne will get over Willoughby, and ultimately, get over herself.

Let’s hear it for Mrs. Jennings. Here’s a bit of video for you to enjoy–I love the pained expressions of everyone else while she and Sir John Middleton guffaw away idiotically.

Have you been surprised by a minor character when rereading a book? Do share!

Posted in Jane Austen, TV and Film | Tagged Sense and Sensibility | 5 Replies

Who’s in charge?

Updated on March 5, 2014 by Janet Mullany

Have you read Jo Baker’s brilliant Longbourn? It’s the book that switches upstairs/downstairs in Pride & Prejudice so we get the story from the servants’ point of view. Because the servants are always there, and reading that book for me has now changed the way I read Austen.

I’m giving a version of my talk on servants for JASNA in Minneapolis this weekend and so I’ve been sprucing up my material and wondering whether or not to include the strange, wonderful, (slightly icky) story of Hannah Cullwick (1833-1909) and her master, Arthur Munby (1828-1910). Hannah wrote a diary, published in 1984 by Virago Press, UK (now out of print) that gives an extraordinarily detailed account of the everyday life of a Victorian servant.

But it’s more than that.

Hannah wrote the diary at the instigation of her lover-employer-husband Arthur Mumby, who had a fetish for working class women and dirt, specifically women getting dirty. So a passage like this would get Arthur all hot and bothered:

Lighted the fire. Brush’d the grates. Clean’d the hall & steps & flags on my knees. Swept & dusted the rooms. Got breakfast up. Made the beds & emptied the slops. Cleaned & wash’d up…Cleaned the stairs & the pantry on my knees. Clean’d the knives & got dinner. Clean’d 3 pairs of boots. Clean’d away after dinner & began the preserving about ½ past 3 & kept on till 11, leaving off only to get the supper & have my tea…Went to bed very tired & dirty.

Boots, by the way, figure rather largely in their relationship.

Hannah took great pride in her strength and endurance, choosing always to remain at the bottom of the Victorian servant food chain, as a maid of all work. A lawyer and amateur artist, poet, and anthropologist, Munby had a huge collection of photographs and other records of working women that he bequeathed to Trinity College Cambridge.

Hannah met Munby in 1854 and he followed her around from one position to another, watching her beat carpets and so on, and she was fired from at least one household because of his interest in her–this was a period, of course, when women servants were not allowed to have gentleman followers. Working at boarding houses rather than private houses gave her greater freedom. Eventually he hired her in 1872 and they married secretly the following year. But to all intents and purposes she was still his servant, and Munby’s friends–who included Ruskin, Rosetti, and Browning–had no idea of the true relationship, one that seems to have been classic BDSM.

For freedom & true lowliness, there’s nothing like being a maid of all work (1872)

She wore a locking chain around her neck, for which Munby had the key, and a leather strap on one wrist as a sign of his ownership. Munby posed her in various disguises–as a man, a chimney sweep, in blackface, as a fashionable lady.

But she had an extraordinarily strong sense of independence outside their fantasy life. She insisted, even after marriage, on receiving wages and keeping her own name, and she left him in 1877, although he continued to visit her, but presumably on her terms. You have to wonder who did wear the trousers in this relationship.

And that’s the question that seems to have plagued households, particularly during the Victorian period, when master-servant relationships seem to have escalated to an extraordinarily virulent level: who really is in charge here?

So at the moment, yes to Longbourn, and yes to Cullwick-Munby, and let’s see if anyone picks up on the subtext. And I expect they will, because smart readers of Austen always find the subtext.

Posted in Jane Austen, Research | Tagged servants | 2 Replies

Photography in the Regency?

Updated on February 27, 2014 by Janet Mullany

This is a repeat of a post from February 11 a few years ago, which was the birthday of William Fox Talbot (1800-1877) who is credited with being the inventor of photography.

As with many scientific discoveries, the bits and pieces of evidence–optical and chemical–were lying around for some time, and it took an enquiring mind to put them together.

The optical side of photography was provided with the Camera Obscura, which had been around for centuries as an aid to drawing. Leonardo da Vinci used it, and his contemporary Daniel Barbaro described it thus:

Close all shutters and doors until no light enters the camera except through the lens, and opposite hold a piece of paper, which you move forward and backward until the scene appears in the sharpest detail. There on the paper you will see the whole view as it really is, with its distances, its colours and shadows and motion, the clouds, the water twinkling, the birds flying. By holding the paper steady you can trace the whole perspective with a pen, shade it and delicately colour it from nature.

An early sci-fi novel by Charles-Francois Tiphaigne de la Roche (1729-1774), Giphantie, predicted the invention of photography.

For centuries people had been aware that some colors bleach in the sun, but it wasn’t clear whether this was the effect of heat, air, or light. In the seventeenth century, Robert Boyle, a founder of the Royal Society, reported that silver chloride darkened with exposure. At the beginning of the nineteenth century Thomas Wedgwood of pottery fame experimented with capturing images but couldn’t make them permanent.

The first successful picture was made with an eight hour exposure by Joseph Niepce in 1827, using material that hardened on exposure to light–he named it a heliograph. Rejected by the Royal Society, Niepce went into partnership with Louis Daguerre, who reduced the exposure time to half an hour and discovered that salt stabilized the image, and invented the daguerrotype.

Interestingly, neither Niepce nor Fox Talbot could draw, which is why they were so interested in artificial means of producing images. Niepce was forced to look elsewhere to continue his interest in lithography when his artist son went to war in 1814 (and may have died at Waterloo–something I couldn’t confirm). Fox Talbot continued his own experiments, successfully producing his first photograph of the oriel window at Lacock Abbey,Wiltshire, in 1835.

The photograph at the top of this post is also by Fox Talbot, showing Nelson’s column under construction in Trafalgar Square in 1843.

He nicknamed his cameras mousetraps.

In 1844-46 he published a collection of photographs, The Pencil of Nature (get your mind out of the gutter), demonstrating that this technology had both artistic and practical possibilities–in inventorying possessions, creating likenesses, and possibly also being of use in the legal system. He reminded readers:

The plates of the present work are impressed by the agency of Light alone, without any aid whatever from the artist’s pencil. They are the sun-pictures themselves, and not, as some persons have imagined, engravings in imitation.

If Talbot Fox had been born earlier, or if he had been a particularly precocious teenager, we might have had photos of the Regency. So, the kickass question. Imagine you’ve gone back in time with your digital camera carefully concealed in your capacious muff or elegant reticule (or, okay, tucked inside your stays):

Who or what would you photograph?

Posted in Research | Tagged photography | 3 Replies

Your Richard III update

Updated on February 20, 2014 by Janet Mullany

I have been avidly following the news about the discovery and identity of the remains of Richard III. I’ve been a sucker for Richard III ever since reading Josephine Tey’s The Daughter of Time--without going so far as to join the Richard III Society or anything (here’s the US R3 Society). I’m already mightily distracted from writing.

This month I attended a couple of events at the Folger, a fantastic resource in Washington DC that those of us who live here tend to take for granted. First, a lecture from the forensic and archaeological team, and then I saw the current production of Richard III which I highly recommend. Here are some interesting snippets from the lecture:

The team is doing further DNA analysis from tooth tartar (eew).
Richard III would probably have gone down in history, had the Tudors not taken over, as a just but fair king (the um, issue, of the two princes in the Tower would have been downplayed, just as the Tudors, and Shakespeare, propagandized Richard as a misshapen spawn of Satan).
Yes, he did have scoliosis. But he was also a seasoned warrior. The BBC (I think) is doing an experiment with a young man with the same degree of scoliosis teaching him horseback warfare, wearing armor, and so far so good. Expect a documentary or two.

In the Regency, Richard III was one of Edmund Kean’s signature roles but he had a rival–Junius Brutus Booth, father of John Wilkes Booth. Booth’s London career was launched in 1817 in the title role of Richard III at Covent Garden, and thereafter Boothites and Keanites frequently quarreled in theaters. Booth and Kean seem to have both exploited the rivalry, often performing in the same plays.

Booth emigrated to the US in 1821 where he led a colorful life as an actor, and is buried in Green Mount Cemetery, Baltimore, where Betsy Bonaparte also lies.