Tuesday 26 April 2022

THE MURDER OF MR WICKHAM BLOG TOUR: READ AN EXCERPT

 


Here I am with a new awesome book recommendation, an Austen-inspired murder mystery novel perfect for you,  in which a summer house party turns into a thrilling whodunit when Jane Austen's Mr. Wickham—one of literature’s most notorious villains—meets a sudden and suspicious end.  Scroll down and enjoy discovering more about Claudia Gray's The Murder of Mr Wickham! MG 

Monday 11 April 2022

BLOG TOUR: LUCY KNIGHT, HOW I CAME TO WRITE MARIA BERTRAM'S DAUGHTER

 


Thank you, Maria Grazia, for hosting me on my blog tour. I thought your readers might be interested to know how I came to write Maria Bertram’s Daughter as I understand that Mansfield Park sequels are unusual. Personally, it is one of my favourites. There is so much symbolism in it, and it is so rich in characters, mostly unpleasant. My other favourite is Sense and Sensibility because that, too, is full of monsters. I used to read Jane Austen for the romance, but now I read her mostly for the laughs, which come mainly thanks to the hypocrisy and unintentional self-revelation of the secondary characters.

Tuesday 5 April 2022

AN AFFECTIONATE HEART BLOG TOUR: AUTHOR GUEST POST & GIVEAWAY

 


Thanks for welcoming back to My Jane Austen Book Club to talk about An Affectionate Heart!

Spinster. Ape leader. Old maid. These are Georgian-era words that could have been applied to women like Miss Bates, Elizabeth Elliot, Charlotte Lucas, and the Parker sisters. The insulting idea of an older, unmarried woman surrounded by cats isn’t a new one. Although she’s only 21, Elizabeth Bennet in An Affectionate Heart is another poor, unmarried woman with little agency over her own life.

As Emma Woodhouse tells us, if you’re an heiress it’s not so bad to be single, but if you’re poor like Miss Bates you practically deserve to be ridiculed. There was intense social prejudice against unmarried women and few respectable means of employment for the women of this class. Aside from all the typical reasons to marry, many women felt a duty to their families to marry to relieve them of the burden of providing for them.