REGINA JEFFERS, HORSE RACING IN THE REGENCY. INTRODUCING ELIZABETH BENNET'S GALLANT SUITOR.

 

HORSE RACING IN THE REGENCY

In my latest Austen-inspired novel, Elizabeth Bennet’s Gallant Suitor, part of the action centers around a horse race—specifically one with a horse called “Bingley’s T,” owned by Charles Bingley. Yes, I have Bingley take Netherfield not only to satisfy his father’s wish for his son to own property, as would a proper gentleman of the time, but also to satisfy Bingley’s obsession with horses. In my tale, Bingley hopes to develop a line of thoroughbreds. “Bingley’s T” is an Arabian mare and untested and an unknown in her first race.

DON JACOBSON, LIZZY BENNET MEETS THE COUNTESS

The Process Behind the Cover of “Lizzy Bennet Meets the Countess”

By this point, Janet Taylor and I have firmly established the overall cover format for Bennet Wardrobe stories. There have been two in the “new style” –The Keeper: Mary Bennet’s Extraordinary Journey and The Exile: Kitty Bennet and the Belle Époque. This latest novella will be the third utilizing the unifying “look.”  

One might suggest that if you have the frame, it is a relatively simple process to drop a picture into the hole. However, there is a peculiar zen behind an art director’s craft. As opposed to being almost incidental, what truly drives the underlying creative impulse for the cover design is the core visual. Even if Janet is not creating a new image, she derives the primary background color for the title block and then the complementary colors for the type itself. Wrong choices can have awful consequences.

THE ELIZABETH PAPERS BLOG TOUR - JENETTA JAMES, IMAGINING MRS DARCY & HER FAMILY: A MATCH THE FACE TO THE CHARACTER COMPETITION + GIVEAWAY

If you close your eyes and say “Elizabeth Bennet”, who do you see? This is something that I have tried to do many times whilst writing about her, with varying success.

Of course, throughout The Elizabeth Papers, “Elizabeth Bennet” is in fact, “Elizabeth Darcy”. The story commences in 1817, when our favourite couple have been married for some four years. At the very outset of this story, Elizabeth is, as she would have it, four and twenty years of age. She is married and has two young children with another one well on the way. In fact, she spends quite a lot of The Elizabeth Papers pregnant.

All of these things have ramifications for what she looks like, and how we can imagine her. I’m conscious that we are all influenced by the various actresses who have played Elizabeth. Often, once we have seen a character performed, we can’t get that face out of our minds. I have tried to apply a sort of method acting theory to my writing. Basically, I try to imagine myself back in time. What do the clothes feel like? How do the hairstyles feel when you touch your hand to them? How comfortable was Mr. Darcy’s carriage as it rattled out of Pemberley?

The questions crop up in relation to other characters as well of course. What does Mr. Darcy really look like? We know that he’s tall, but how tall? How have the years treated the wider Bennet family? Whay. I hope that you enjoy it. Can you guess who I imagine each one to be?

TALKING JANE AUSTEN WITH ... LYNN MESSINA, AUTHOR OF PREJUDICE & PRIDE. WIN COPIES OF THE BOOK!

Hello Lynn and welcome to our online Jane Austen club. My first question is, what was your first encounter with Austen and her world like? And was it through reading one of her books or watching one of the movie/TV adaptations?

My first experience was reading Pride and Prejudice when I was fifteen years old. I was in the back of my car and my family were driving from Long Island to Montreal to go skiing, which was, like, an eight-hour trek, and I’d slept for most of the trip, so when we arrived at the slopes I’d just gotten up to Mr. Darcy’s letter to Lizzy and the last thing I wanted to do—I mean, the very last thing—was put the book down and go ski.

When and how you came to think of writing  a Jane Austen –inspired book?

I came up with the idea after seeing Bride & Prejudice—Gurinder Chadha’s Bollywood adaptation—in the movie theater so that was eleven years ago now. I was waiting with a friend for her bus and we were chatting about the film and we both thought it was slightly off because the Elizabeth character was so mean. She was, we thought, more like the Darcy character, and by the time her bus came, say, ten minutes later, I had the general idea mapped out. What I loved about it was how perfectly the names worked with it: Fitzwilliam Darcy becoming Darcy Fitzwilliam and Elizabeth Bennet becoming Bennet Elizabeth. OK, his last name doesn’t work at all, and don’t think I haven’t been sulking about that for more than a decade.

What’s surprising in your retelling of Jane Austen’s most beloved tale is … a gender-bendy twist. Could you tell us more about your choice and briefly introduce us your characters?

It’s all hazy now, but years ago I read about a director who switched all the parts in a Shakespeare play—it might have been Macbeth—to see if the emotional truths held regardless of gender. That stayed with me and a few years later I wrote a book about a girl who stages a gender-bendy Hamlet to protest gender inequality in her high school’s drama department. So as soon as I came up with the idea, I embraced it with both hands because it dealt with things I’ve been thinking about for a long time.