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
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
I have a special treat for you today, my dear readers! It is always so exciting to get a peek at a new cover before everyone else and then get the chance to share it with the world! Before I unveil the gorgeous cover for Amy George’s latest book, Amy is here to introduce you all to The Sweetest Ruin. Please give her a warm welcome:
