We are thrilled to welcome
author Natalie Jenner back to My Jane Austen Book Club to discuss her
latest novel, Austen at Sea. Known for her captivating historical
fiction and her deep love of all things Austen, Natalie Jenner’s new book takes
readers on a transatlantic adventure filled with literary intrigue, romance,
and the enduring spirit of Jane Austen herself.
In Austen at Sea, readers will follow the Stevenson sisters and the Nelson brothers as they journey to England in 1865, lured by the promise of a rare Austen artifact and the chance to meet her last surviving brother, Sir Francis Austen. Alongside historical figures like Louisa May Alcott, Jenner masterfully weaves a tale of adventure and self-discovery, all under the guiding influence of Austen’s legacy.
Join us as we discover more
about the inspiration behind Austen at Sea, explore the role of
literature in this thrilling voyage, and learn more about Natalie Jenner’s
ongoing connection to the world of Jane Austen.
Austen at Sea features an exciting
journey across the Atlantic, with characters drawn to England by the promise of
a rare Austen artifact. What inspired this adventurous premise, and how did you
imagine Jane Austen’s influence guiding your characters on this voyage?
The initial inspiration for this
premise began in the fall of 2017, a year when I immersed myself in Jane Austen
as a way of coping with a family medical crisis, which in turn led to the
writing of my debut novel The Jane Austen Society. One of the
books I read at that time was Professor Juliette Wells’s excellent Reading
Austen in America, which details the ownership history of the first US
edition of Emma. Here I learned about the Quincy sisters of
Boston who wrote to Admiral Sir Francis Austen in 1852 to express admiration
for his own sister’s work, culminating in a trip to visit him some years later.
I thought to myself, “They’re like the original groupies!” and in that moment,
I knew I would one day write this book.
I am one of those authors who
writes entirely intuitively and impulsively, word by word, page by page, in
order to find out what is going to happen next (we’re called “pantsers” versus
plotters, because we write by the seat of our pants!). With Austen at Sea,
it wasn’t until I sat down and typed the first words (“Six justices were
assembled in chambers to consider the case before them”) that I had any inkling
of how Austen might be interrogated within my own text—by a “book club” made up
of judges debating her works! Austen’s influence on my characters was something
that I always caught up to after it happened—one of my great joys in editing is
detecting the hidden motives, patterns and themes of my story long after the
fact, making the entire act of creative writing even more magical. I write to
feel that magic.
The Stevenson sisters are inspired by Jane
Austen’s works to seek adventure and independence. How did Austen’s novels and
her own life shape the characters and themes of Austen at Sea?
When my characters first confront each other on the page, I sometimes see
“sparks.” These were immediate in Austen at Sea between twenty-year-old
Charlotte Stevenson and Justice Thomas Nash, her father’s colleague on the
Massachusetts state bench. There was also a significant age difference (Nash is
a judge in his thirties), and so the Emma/Knightley dynamic quickly asserted
itself as a fun relationship parallel to play with. And the minute senator’s
daughter (and occasional gambler) Sara-Beth Gleason entered Haslett Nelson’s
bookshop and threw a book down from the rolling ladder for him to catch, I saw
shades of Mary Crawford. I haven’t intentionally thought through any other
parallels with Austen characters, but I’m sure they’re there!
I didn’t plan on an elopement happening in the plot, but the idea quickly took
hold given how relevant runaway lovers were to both Austen’s books and her
time. And the idea of women centuries ago writing within a home, somewhat
secretly, as form of amusement and connection—much as we know Austen herself
enjoyed doing—definitely was in my mind as I pictured the two Stevenson sisters
furtively corresponding with Sir Francis from their attic bedroom.
Sir Francis Austen plays a key role in
this story, drawing both the Stevenson sisters and the Nelson brothers to
England. What drew you to write about Jane Austen’s brother, and how did you
approach bringing this real historical figure to life on the page?
Sir Francis might be my
favourite character in the book, partly because I learned so much about him as
I wrote him. I was particularly drawn to his love for the sea which manifested
itself in a myriad of ways as I wrote, from the handcrafted telescope he
carries everywhere to the captain’s desk in which he hides the secret literary
trove of his sister.
Whenever I incorporate
real-life people in my fiction, my approach is to first determine when and
where the story will take place and make sure the “goal posts” with such real
lives match up (in this case, I wanted the setting to be post-Civil War society
and knew that Sir Francis had died in 1865, and so 1865 post-war Boston it
was!). I then try to collect as much information as possible about any
real-life figures in proportion to their role in the plot; hence, Sir Francis
was researched the most, followed by Louisa May Alcott, followed by Sir Cresswell Cresswell and so on.
As I write, I stop and google
any questions that come up: what telescope might Sir Francis have owned? When
exactly did Louisa May Alcott sail to England and on what ship? How many cases
did Sir Cresswell decide as head of the England and Wales divorce court? As a
former lawyer, I always want to make sure that every word I’ve typed either happened
or—most importantly, as this is fiction—could have happened. Through this
somewhat fluid approach, I hope to always keep my story at the forefront of my
efforts and the history as the scaffolding on which to hang it, rather than the
other way around!
Your novel includes an intriguing blend of
real and fictional characters, including Louisa May Alcott. How did you decide
which historical figures to include, and what kind of conversations do you
imagine they’d have had about Jane Austen’s work?
My characters, real or imaginary, always choose me. When I read that
Alcott, Austen’s greatest nineteenth-century Boston female authorial counterpart,
sailed to England the same summer as my characters, my jaw dropped: I simply
had to find a way to get the Stevenson sisters on board the same boat as Louisa!
The same thing happened while writing Bloomsbury Girls (about a
trio of women who try to take over a bookshop from its all-male management), when
I learned that Peggy Guggenheim once worked in an all-female bookshop in
Manhattan—into that book she, too, went!
I loved researching Alcott and learning of her reading preference for
Dickens and the Brontës over Austen, given her own writerly
gravitation toward scenes of “blood and thunder.” And I had so much fun writing
the shipboard chapters in which Louisa and the other female passengers plan their
charity performance of A Tale of Two Cities and debate this very
thing. As for Sir Francis, of the most touching aspects of Austen’s life and
legacy was how proud he and the family were of her writing. I could imagine them
revelling in Austen’s stories for many years after her tragic early death,
parsing the pages for clues and parallels with their wider circle of relations
and friends—something everyone enjoys doing when there is a published writer in
their midst!
Rare books and literary artifacts are a
significant part of Austen at Sea. What do you think the discovery of a
new Austen artifact might mean to fans of her work, both in your novel and in
real life?
When a genius dies young, from
Shakespeare to Van Gogh and sadly onward, we seem compelled to try to “pin
down” the source of their greatness and what they were like as people. In my
novel, the characters are energized by discovering Sir Francis’s hidden trove
of his sister’s writing: they feel themselves brought closer to Austen as a
result (the goal, I think, of many collectors) while also recognizing the
tremendous potential benefit to serious study and analysis of her works.
Recently, after decades of
scholars and fans alike contemplating Austen’s love life (or possible lack
thereof) as an underpinning to her books, a new letter came up for auction in
which Jane writes Cassandra of an upcoming ball with Tom Lefroy in attendance.
Suddenly a romance previously conjectured from the barest of historical record
felt much more real and probable and affecting, sending us back to the books
themselves with a renewed sense of the workings of Austen’s own heart and their
possible ramifications within her plots.
The spirit of Jane Austen seems to hover
over this story, influencing the characters' lives. If Austen herself were a
character in Austen at Sea, how do you think she might have responded to
the adventure, and what advice might she have offered?
If Austen herself were a character
in Austen at Sea, I think she would have behaved more like the calm and steely Henrietta
Stevenson of Boston or the witty but morally upright Justice Nash, than those
characters who are more rebellious or (literally!) “gambling” in nature. I think
Austen in my book would have tried to get what she wants while always
respecting social mores, which in turn requires patience and steadfastness of
heart—very Anne Eliot-esque! I think she would have advised Henrietta in
particular to follow her heart but at a slower and steadier pace.
With Austen at Sea and your
previous books like The Jane Austen Society, you’ve built a literary
world rich with Austen’s legacy. What do you hope readers take away from these
stories about the enduring power of Jane Austen’s influence?
Constantly realizing anew the
“bottomless well” to Austen’s genius, I hope that my readers glean that same
appreciation from my stories. This must be why both of my Austen-connected
works centre around groups of people (whether Chawton villagers or supreme
court judges) who excitedly share with each other their own latest insights
into her books. There are few reading experiences more pleasurable to me than
returning to one of Austen’s stories and discovering for the first time a new
clue to the magic she seemed—like all geniuses—to so effortlessly weave.
Finally, if you could ask Jane Austen one
question, what would it be—and why?
Was there ever a different
ending to Mansfield Park?
As a writer, I can’t help but
regard the revolving quartet of Edmund, Mary, Henry and Fanny—and the almost
too-sudden swerve ball Austen throws at the end—as something that stayed in
motion in her head. Near the end of Austen at Sea, Charlotte
Stevenson confesses how “she had wished Henry Crawford for Fanny Price all
along. She couldn’t help but wonder if Austen had changed her own mind
somewhere in the writing of it, so fascinating a couple as they almost became.”
The “pantser” in me will always wonder the very same!
ABOUT THE BOOK
Two pairs of siblings, devotees of Jane Austen, find their lives transformed by a visit to England and Sir Francis Austen, her last surviving brother and keeper of a long-suppressed, secret legacy.
In Boston, 1865, Charlotte and Henrietta Stevenson, daughters of a Massachusetts Supreme Court Justice, have accomplished as much as women are allowed in those days. Chafing against those restrictions and inspired by the works of Jane Austen, they start a secret correspondence with Sir Francis Austen, her last surviving brother, now in his nineties. He sends them an original letter from his sister and invites them to come visit him in England.
In Philadelphia, Nicholas & Haslett Nelson—bachelor brothers, veterans of the recent Civil War, and rare book dealers—are also in correspondence with Sir Francis Austen, who lures them, too, to England, with the promise of a never-before-seen, rare Austen artifact to be evaluated.
The Stevenson sisters sneak away without a chaperone to sail to England. On their ship are the Nelson brothers, writer Louisa May Alcott, Sara-Beth Gleason—wealthy daughter of a Pennsylvania state senator with her eye on the Nelsons—and, a would-be last-minute chaperone to the Stevenson sisters, Justice Thomas Nash.
It's a voyage and trip that will dramatically change each of their lives in ways that are unforeseen, with the transformative spirit of the love of literature and that of Jane Austen herself.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Natalie Jenner is the USA Today and #1 nationally bestselling author of THE JANE AUSTEN SOCIETY and BLOOMSBURY GIRLS, which were both Amazon Best Books of the Month, Indie Next Picks and People Magazine Books of the Week. THE JANE AUSTEN SOCIETY was the runner-up for best historical fiction in the 2020 Goodreads Choice Awards and has been published in more than twenty languages. Natalie's third novel, EVERY TIME WE SAY GOODBYE, releases on May 14, 2024, and her fourth novel AUSTEN AT SEA is scheduled to release on May 6 2025. Born in England and raised in Canada, Natalie has been a corporate lawyer and career coach and once owned an independent bookstore in Oakville, Ontario, where she lives with her family and two rescue dogs.
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