Author Archives: Janet Mullany

The Pride & Prejudice Ball

Updated on February 6, 2014 by Janet Mullany

I have to rush off to do various strange things today so here’s a fabulous documentary that I believe has aired on some PBS stations (but not on mine yet). It’s a recreation of the Netherfield Ball at Chawton House and explains what Austen’s readers would have understood about birth, wealth and social standing at such an event. A team of experts, led by Amanda Vickery, reproduce the clothes, food and setting.

Pour yourself a nice cup of … something or other and enjoy. What surprised you about the conclusions the historians reached?

Posted in History, Jane Austen | Tagged Amanda Vickery, Chawton House, Netherfield | Leave a reply

Reviewing the reviews

Updated on January 30, 2014 by Janet Mullany

Today I thought I’d talk about book reviews. There are two schools of thought about reviews:

They don’t matter.
They do matter.

Similarly, writers are advised to:

Comb through your reviews for quotable quotes.
Never, ever read your reviews. That way lies madness.

So today I want to share some of my finest review hours (of different books, if you’re wondering. I don’t think I’ve yet written the book that could elicit all of the following responses):

This book was very vulgar! Pornography is not my thing. The sex acts were very explicit and embarrassing. I thought I Was reading something historical. This was historical to the point of Sodom and Gomorrah.

The “relations” include scenes involving a corpse which is at best in bad taste and at worst borders on the necrophiliac.

… the worst character — ever. I hope she gets crotch rot. And dies.

…a thowback [sic] the vintage sleaze pulps of the 1960’s of which I am an avid collector.

Moral Note: Above, and heck, and “b” word in reference to breeding.

I’ve long ago come to the conclusion that if someone hates a book they’re going to more readily write a review than someone who loved it, or even just sorta liked it. For one thing, it’s easier. It provides catharsis for wasted money or dashed hopes. I’ve just read two wonderful books about the Borgias by Kate Quinn, and all I can do is flap my mouth and wave my hands in inarticulate admiration, wish I could do what she does, and then feel guilty about not going further with it. (Sorry, Kate.)

I will add that there’s only one thing I find truly offensive in a review (rather than feeling mystified), and that’s a reviewer who spells Austen Austin. She’s not a town in Texas. Austen. Write 100 times….

Do reviews influence you when you buy books? Do you review the books you read? And if you’re a writer, what’s the worst or most bizarre review you’ve ever received?

Posted in Jane Austen, Reading | Tagged book reviews | 10 Replies

Free book and new(ish) novella!

Updated on January 22, 2014 by Janet Mullany

I’m happy to announce that A Certain Latitude is free for kindle today through next Monday, so now you have no excuse whatsoever to acquire it. Here’s an excerpt from a very nice review:

The book pairs two subjects you wouldn’t think would work together: very kinky explorations along with a serious eye-opening look at the sugar trade on an island loosely based on Antigua about eight or ten years before the slave trade is abolished in England. … You wouldn’t think those subjects would mesh at all, but in a weird way, they do. It’s not as if modern people don’t get up to serious mischief while the problems of the world continue to rage on right in our faces. However, at the heart of it, what holds the whole story together is a remarkable and easy-to-like heroine. All you need to know about her is this quote from early in the book which portrays her character perfectly: “Whenever she wished she had had the moral courage to starve… she was glad she had the good sense not to.”

And I’ve also reissued my erotic tribute to Jane Eyre– Reader, I Married Him–which caused some weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth for its suggestion that Jane could go in uh, different directions. It is finally, finally priced appropriately for a novella. Cool cover!

And remember that reviews are very, very important to other readers, so please post one.

Thanks! Next week we return to our regularly scheduled program.

Posted in Risky Book Talk | Tagged Charlotte Bronte, Free Book, Jane Eyre | 2 Replies

“I have only a moment before the post goes out…”

Updated on January 15, 2014 by Janet Mullany

The Riskies welcome Sandra Schwab, who’s visiting today!

Many of the real-life contemporaries of our Regency or Victorian heroes and heroines were prolific letter writers. For example, when the British Academy-Pilgrim edition of The Letters of Charles Dickens was completed in 2002, the series had reached twelve (rather fat!) volumes, and supplements with newly discovered letters continued to be published until the summer of 2013. Since nineteenth-century people could not yet share funny pictures of cats online, they used letters to maintain and strengthen relationships with family, friends, and acquaintances. “When [Jane Austen and her sister Cassandra] were apart,” Deirdre Le Faye explains in the preface to Jane Austen’s Letters,

“they wrote to each other about every three or four days – another letter began as soon as the previous one had been posted. There is always a first letter from Jane telling Cassandra of the journey from home to the destination; then a series of letters talking about daily events at the other place; and one or more letters planning the journey home. If Cassandra is the traveller, then the first letter is from Jane hoping she had a good journey; the bulk of the sequence is Jane telling Cassandra how life progresses at home; and the last one or two are Jane’s anticipation of her sister’s speedy and comfortable return trip.”

It had been the introduction of turnpike roads and the improved methods of road-making developed by Telford in the late 1700s that had made it possible to replace mounted post boys with mail coaches. In subsequent years, the mail system in Great Britain became extremely efficient and very fast: at eight o’ clock each evening, the post bags were brought from the General Post Office in Lombard Street to the various coaching inns (typically with underground stables) in London from where the mail coaches would start on their all-night journeys. While sixty or seventy years before, letters between London and Edinburgh were only dispatched once a week and, by stage coach, the journey between London and Edinburgh took between twelve to sixteen days (if the weather did not suddenly turn to the worse!), the Regency mail coach only needed about 58 hours to reach Edinburgh.

Within London, letters were delivered by the Two-Penny Post. The Picture of London for 1805 includes the following information about this service (“country” refers to specific places in Kent, Surrey, Hertfordshire, Essex, Middlesex):

Six deliveries per day! Can you imagine? Of course, I had to put this interesting bit of research into one of my books. And thus, in SPRINGTIME PLEASURES Charlie, my very tall, bespectacled heroine, makes plenty of use of the Two-Penny Post and exchanges many letters with her friend Emma-Lee, who is ever ready to help Charlie navigate the pitfalls of polite society:

Thank you for your message, dear Charlie. I have only a moment before the post goes out so please excuse the shortness of this note.—I should hope your first Ball was as splendid as you ever wished for & I also hope that you did not Damage the two disparaging gentlemen. This is NOT DONE in London and w’d cause the most frightful Scandal! (Even if they deserved it.)—I am most curious to hear more about your new acquaintance. I c’d not find out about any rules about Invitations to Drives around the Park, but I w’d deem it best that you w’d not mention things like Removing Bloodstains from Delicate Fabrics, the Correct Way of Gutting Fish, or the Incident on our way south. You must remember that Lady Isabella is a Delicately Reared Young Lady!
Yours very affectionally, E.-L. Brockwin

P.S. I understand that it is Not Done in Polite Society to adress the groom on the box seat, except for giving him directions. So you better not ask him about the horses!

Sandra Schwab started writing her first novel when she was seven years old. Twenty-odd years later, telling stories is still her greatest passion, even though by now she has exchanged her old fountain pen (covered with pink hearts) for a computer keyboard (black, no hearts). She lives near Frankfurt on the Main, Germany, with a sketchbook, a sewing machine, and altogether too many books.

Buy SPRINGTIME PLEASURES on Amazon

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Or ask her a question here today!

Posted in Risky Regencies | 6 Replies

Upping the traffic

Updated on January 9, 2014 by Janet Mullany

I read somewhere in my ~~time wasting~~ serious research online that the way to improve traffic to a blog was to cover certain topics so I thought I’d give it a try.

First, PETS. Here’s Samuel Johnson’s cat Hodge, of whom Boswell wrote:

I recollect him one day scrambling up Dr. Johnson’s breast, apparently with much satisfaction, while my friend smiling and half-whistling, rubbed down his back, and pulled him by the tail; and when I observed he was a fine cat, saying, ‘Why yes, Sir, but I have had cats whom I liked better than this;’ and then as if perceiving Hodge to be out of countenance, adding, ‘but he is a very fine cat, a very fine cat indeed.’

COLIN FIRTH Picture of Colin Firth with wet shirt for no particular reason.

Next, FASHION. PROMENADE COSTUME. From Ackermann’s January 1814: A Plain cambric robe, with long gathered sleeve and high arched collar, trimmed with net lace or muslin. A Spanish lappelled coat of fine orange Merino cloth; full epaulette ornaments on the shoulders: the whole lined throughout with white sarsnet, and trimmed with a raised border of white velvet or swansdown. A small, provincial bonnet of the same material as the coat, ornamented with a full curled ostrich feather. White spotted ermine or Chinchilli muff. Gloves grey or light blue kid. Half-boots of orange-coloured jean, or velvet. But she still looks cold.

You may not ever have considered that when COLIN FIRTH plunged into that pond he might have encountered certain aquatic life forms. His attitude of discomfort may well have been not because he appeared in a state of undress but because he was anxious to get rid of certain attachments to his person…

There is actually a bit of dialogue, struck from the script that goes as follows:

Darcy: Madam (bows). Would you have some salt upon your person?

Elizabeth: Salt, sir?

Darcy: A match, then?

Elizabeth: Oh, certainly. (Takes a matchbook from her reticule)

Darcy: The Meryton Go-Go Swingers’ Club? Ridiculous. Matches haven’t even been invented yet. I suppose I’ll have to wait until I get into the house.

… Bringing us onto the next hot topic of HEALTH. I thought this picture spoke for itself. I hope you appreciate that I passed over some truly disgusting pics to find one that showed the business but would not make you lose your lunch.

Talking of which, FOOD is always popular too, but I thought that instead, for a change, we’d have RICHARD ARMITAGE. Although I did find several artistic shots of his behind, I hate to tell you that it looked OK but pretty much like anyone else’s. Unless you were on very intimate terms with Mr. Armitage (and someone certainly was) you’d never have known whether it was his or his bottom double’s.