Today I’m delighted to welcome Amy George to Diary of an Eccentric as part of the blog tour for her latest Pride and Prejudice variation, The Sweetest Ruin. After hosting the cover reveal, I was dying to read the book, so I bought it on release day and savored it over the course of a week when I should have been writing my novel or doing countless other tasks on my to-do list. It was totally worth falling behind on everything else so I could finish it (you can read my brief thoughts here), and if you haven’t read it yet, you’re in for a treat!
Now, Amy is here to talk about Austen’s Elizabeth and her modern-day Elizabeth. How exciting! Please give her a warm welcome:
Good afternoon, Anna. It’s such a honor to be here at Diary of an Eccentric, to be with your readers today to share this post for the blog tour of my new release, The Sweetest Ruin. This new book is a modernization of Pride & Prejudice, but naturally there are connections between the two stories which transcend time; just like Jane Austen’s Elizabeth, my Elizabeth is also an avid reader. So I thought it would be fun today to highlight the connections between these two characters’ lives, as well as to the woman who started it all, the beloved Jane Austen!
“We have tried to get Self-controul, but in vain. I should like to know what [Mrs Knight’s] Estimate is, but am always half afraid of finding a clever novel too clever and of finding my own people all forestalled.”
(Jane Austen, 30th April 1811)In today’s modern world, we tend to take books for granted, even though many of us relish being able to walk into a bookshop or a library and walk out with a bundle of papers teeming with stories waiting to share the lives of people lived in hundreds of different centuries, in a million elsewheres. Many of us have even discovered the thrill of owning an e-reading device, where we can peruse a wide assortment of titles and sink ourselves into thousands of books all with the tap of our fingertip.
We are women and we read.
Yet when we think about our own joyful access to books, it’s difficult to imagine how this access has been limited to millions of women in the past (and is still in many places). There was a time instead when women were educated from their earliest years in the nursery about how to run a household and not in the subjects we are able to study today, such as math, history, or science. We might often picture Elizabeth Bennet as a reader, but she was one of the lucky ones! Her father found solace in his library and, fortunately for [at least one of] his daughters, he was likely to allow them to read most of the tomes he possessed at Longbourn.
“Purchasing new works of fiction would have been beyond the likes of the modest Austen family. Jane, who read extensively from a young age, relied on her family’s libraries, borrowing from friends and circulating libraries. Published works during her life were mainly gothic, sentimental, melodramas. Dr Gillian Dow, of Southampton University and director of research at Chawton House Library, says they were read and loved by Jane Austen as much as poetry, classics and works from the Continent.”
“Austen’s letters, family biographical notes and novels are peppered with admiration for different writers and works.” We know she read Ann Radcliffe, who was known as the pioneer of the Gothic novel, as well as novelists Frances Burney and Maria Edgeworth. The final paragraph of Burney’s novel Cecilia, a favourite of Austen’s, uses the phrase Pride and Prejudice three times in block capitals and probably inspired her own novel’s title:
‘”The whole of this unfortunate business,” said Dr. Lyster, “has been the result of PRIDE and PREJUDICE. … Yet this, however, remember: if to PRIDE and PREJUDICE you owe your miseries, so wonderfully is good and evil balanced, that to PRIDE and PREJUDICE you will also owe their termination…”‘ (Frances Burney, Cecilia).
Samuel Johnson, William Cowper, George Crabbe, Robert Burns, Walter Scott and Henry Fielding were her favorite male writers, with Samuel Richardson being “the writer she consistently read, re-read and quoted throughout her life.” Richardson is also said to have been “a big influence on her teenage writing.” It has been noted that when her family moved to Bath, Jane was in utter despair at the loss of access to her father’s library and it wasn’t until she moved to Chawton that she had regular access to a library again, when she would visit the Great House, her brother Edward Knight’s estate.
In The Sweetest Ruin, Elizabeth studies literature. I imagine she’s a fan of Poe and Stephen King because she’s dark, but she’s not dark dark. She probably also gets a kick out of the occasional romance novel (to blow off steam) and twisty mysteries like Gone Girl. On days she feels a little cut off from the world, she might pick up some sci-fi like Ready Player One or Red Rising. Though she doesn’t have a lot of time once she meets William Darcy, she’s a voracious reader who will consume nearly whatever book is in her path. Except, probably, self-help books. She’s interested in actual psychology, not the pop psych flavor of the month.
Still today, all over the world, women are denied access to books, to education. One of my personal heroines, Malala Yousefzai, was shot in the head because she wanted an education. She wanted access. Malala is lucky. Elizabeth is lucky. We’re lucky. Because we have all this amazing access through school, through libraries, through commerce.
We can read anything and everything because the world evolved and keeps evolving. And knowing that gives me hope that one day we’ll all have the chance to visit the worlds that Elizabeth Bennet loves through our access to books.
We are women. And we READ.
Reference: Jane Austen: What books were on her reading list?, 23 January 2013, http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/0/21122727
Thank you for sharing that powerful essay, Amy, and congratulations on your new release!
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About The Sweetest Ruin
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About the Author
Amy George is a middle-aged woman who got rid of her old lady/grown up and has since purchased an unreasonably small car. She refuses to listen to its radio at a reasonable volume, especially when the Beastie Boys or the Violent Femmes are playing. She lives in a small town in the Midwest where the bookstore and yarn shop are neighbors and most food is fried. Her household consists of a dog, a man, a hermit, and stubborn soap scum.
She has been writing since she was a child and ran the Hyacinth Gardens, a popular but defunct JAFF site.
Fun fact: My birthday is January 30th so this is like a big birthday party.
Connect with Amy via Facebook | Goodreads | Meryton Press | Twitter
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Giveaway
As part of the blog tour for The Sweetest Ruin, Meryton Press is offering 8 ebooks, open internationally. You must enter through this Rafflecopter link.
Terms and Conditions:
Readers may enter the drawing by tweeting once each day and by commenting daily on a blog post or review that has a giveaway attached to this tour. Entrants must provide the name of the blog where they commented.
Each winner will be randomly selected by Rafflecopter and the giveaway is international. Each entrant is eligible to win one eBook.
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January 29 Austenesque Reviews; Guest Post, Giveaway
January 30 My Jane Austen Book Club; Excerpt Post, Giveaway
January 31 Of Pens and Pages; Guest Post, Giveaway
February 1 More Agreeably Engaged; Guest Post, Giveaway
February 2 Babblings of a Bookworm; Excerpt Post, Giveaway
February 3 My Vices and Weaknesses; Book Review, Giveaway
February 4 My Love for Jane Austen; Character Interview, Giveaway
February 5 Diary of an Eccentric; Guest Post, Giveaway
February 6 Margie’s Must Reads; Book Review, Giveaway
February 7 From Pemberley to Milton; Excerpt Post
February 8 Savvy Verse and Wit; Book Review, Giveaway
February 9 Just Jane 1813; Guest Post, Giveaway
Fun to read about reading. 😉 No matter the era, Elizabeth Bennet would be a reader. But would she be a Kindle girl…?
Thanks, Amy and Anna!
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I absolutely think she would be a Kindle girl! All those books at her fingertips? Yes, please!
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I too bought this book on release day Anna but in my case I started reading and didn’t stop until i had finished. Loved it!
Darcy was fabulous as was Elizabeth. Some other characters were a surprise!
I agree with Amy about how lucky we are with our access to books. As soon as I could read I haunted the local library. At junior school we had a mobile library then I used to help in the library at the Grammar School (and read as many of those books as I could). I started reading to my children as soon as they could listen and now they enjoy reading to their boys.
I was sceptical of e readers at first but got one for Christmas 2014 which is lucky because if I had all my books in paperback I would have needed an extension to house them all.
Apart from my Georgette Heyer collection the majority of my books are JAFF so thank you for adding such a great book to my ‘re read list.
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E-Readers certainly do save space. Mr George and I can’t stop buying books and we both have e-readers. Is there such a thing as too many books?
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This story sounds delightful. My mother was a voracious reader. She and her sister devoured books. When my mother died, my father sold her personal library of over 9 thousand books. I wonder what was in that group? Lawd, I cringe now when I think about it.
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That’s tragic! When I was 23, I moved and donated to the library all the books my grandfather bought me as a child. He died a few months after that and I vowed to never get rid of a book again. I didn’t keep it though.
There was no way I was going to allow “Twilight” to remain in my house.
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Fun to imagine what a modern day Lizzie would read! Thanks Amy!
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Thanks for joining the tour, Anna. I love imagining what’s on other people’s bookshelves. It reveals sooo much about them, doesn’t it?
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Amy: I also think she would be a fan of Eloisa James and Elizabeth Hoyt. (If you’re looking for romance recs…)
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Sounds like another delightful variation.
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Thank you. I hope you win a copy and find out.
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It gives me shivers (of the unpleasant kind) to think about not having the right to an education and hence reading! On the day after we celebrated 100 years since some women in the UK gained the right to vote, I give thanks for all that we women of the 21st century are entitled to.
I’m pretty sure that Jane Austen would have loved a device that could contain a library full of books and yet still fit into her reticule. Mine currently runs at over 700 (and counting!), mainly JAFF but not exclusively.
Thanks for such a thought-provoking piece Amy.
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I really loved this book. Can you imagine Jane Austen with an ereader!
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I really enjoyed this, Amy and Anna. Thank you. I second everything that Anji expressed. Shivers, indeed!
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