Guest Post: Mary Lydon Simonsen on Research and Travel
Welcome to today's guest post from author Mary Lydon Simonsen, author of The Perfect Bride for Mr. Darcy. Following the guest post, be sure to check out the giveaway for US/Canada residents.
Let's give Mary a warm welcome!
Thank you for inviting me to post on your blog.
You have asked me to talk about my research in general and if I have toured England as part of doing my research for The Perfect Bride for Mr. Darcy.
I have been reading non-fiction books on the Regency and Georgian Eras for probably thirty years. I just had no idea that at the time I was reading them that I was researching future novels. Like most people, I was drawn to the tangibles of that time, especially the gorgeous clothes, hairstyles, literature, architecture, romanticized view of traveling in elegant carriages, etc., but I was also attracted to the intangibles, such as the manners and speech of people who appear in Jane Austen’s books.
Having read so much about the era, I know how constrained the lives of most women were. From the moment of their birth, they were under the control of their fathers or a male guardian, then their husbands, or if they never married, possibly their brothers or another male relation. But Elizabeth Bennet is different. She has spunk, and I like spunk. After all, she turned down an offer of marriage from Mr. Darcy, one of England’s elite and someone who would have made her financially secure for the rest of her life. That took courage.
On behalf of the era’s repressed females, in The Perfect Bride for Mr. Darcy, I stormed the fortress and liberated two ladies in Miss Austen’s Pride and Prejudice: Anne de Bourgh and Georgiana Darcy. In this story, Anne is no longer the voiceless daughter of Lady Catherine, but a woman who sees how her cousin, Fitzwilliam Darcy, suffers as a result of failing to capture the heart of the woman he loves, and she sets out to change that. On the way, she enlists Georgiana Darcy, who will shortly make her debut in society, and a flower ready to blossom. I wanted to open up Georgiana’s character, and so I wrote about a typical teenager: chatty, nosy, teasing, and curious, but someone who cares deeply about her brother.
As far as travel is concerned, I have been to England twice. During my first visit, I was more interested in the Tudors, and so I visited Hampton Court, the Tower of London, Warwick Castle, etc. On my second visit, I traveled with my two teenage daughters, who were not jumping up and down at the idea of visiting Chawton Cottage, Austen’s last home before moving to Winchester. I did, however, get to Bath and visited all the public rooms, an experience that was very helpful when I wrote Anne Elliot, A New Beginning. I also drove through Devon, Dorset, Hampshire, Hertfordshire, and Derbyshire doing drive-by research. Although I did not stop at any Austen locales (except Winchester Cathedral), the countryside left an indelible impression on me and proved invaluable when I started to write Austen re-imaginings. Thanks Mary for sharing your research and travel experiences with us.
About the Author:
Mary Lydon Simonsen’s first book, Searching for Pemberley, was acclaimed by Booklist, Publishers Weekly, and RT Book Reviews. She is well loved and widely followed on all the Jane Austen fanfic sites, with tens of thousands of hits and hundreds of reviews whenever she posts. She lives in Peoria, Arizona where she is working on her next Jane Austen novel. For more information, please visit http://marysimonsenfanfiction.blogspot.com/ and http://www.austenauthors.com/, where she regularly contributes.
Dear readers, Sourcebooks is offering 2 copies of A Perfect Bride for Mr. Darcy by Mary Lydon Simonsen for 2 U.S. or Canadian readers.
To Enter:
1. Leave a comment on this post about one of your favorite travel spots
2. For a second entry, Tweet, Facebook, etc. the giveaway and leave a link and comment on this post.
Deadline: January 12, 2011, at 11:59 PM EST
For another chance to win this book, visit Austen Authors.