A Novel Bibliography: A Gallery of Royals and Nobles

I'm a longtime reader and collector of historical fiction with members of royal and noble families as major characters.  It's not so much the pomp and pageantry I enjoy reading about (although check out the glamorous gowns in the covers below...) but seeing how each character deals with power and responsibility – and balances the needs of their people against their personal desires.  These authors place us front and center, letting us observe how their protagonists' actions shaped the history of their country.

Here I present a gallery of 27 novels fitting this description being published in 2013, ones I haven't previously covered this year (see also Patricia Bracewell's Shadow on the Crown, Sandra Byrd's Roses Have Thorns, and Anne Easter Smith's Royal Mistress).  Although they may not be royal or noble themselves, illegitimate children, hand-fasted wives, and royal mistresses are included in this list, too.  Undoubtedly I've been forgetful and left some obvious choices out; please let me know what I'm missing.

In order:

An alternate history of the Tudors (Ballantine, May)
Bess of Hardwick, Countess of Shrewsbury (Berkley, July)

Eleanor of Aquitaine, first in a new trilogy (Sphere, June)

Cleopatra Selene, Queen of Mauretania, last in a trilogy (NAL, Dec)

Philip IV of France, 1st in classic series (HarperCollins, Mar)
Audrey Malte, illegitimate daughter of Henry VIII (Gallery, Sept)

Catherine of Aragon (St. Martin's, Oct)
Katherine Parr (Simon & Schuster, Aug)
Lady Godiva, wife of Leofric, Earl of Mercia (William Morrow, July)

Queen Jezebel (David C. Cook, May)

Elizabeth I Spymaster Chronicles, book 2 (St. Martin's Griffin, July)

Elizabeth of York, queen to Henry VII (Touchstone, Aug)

Marie Antoinette, book 3 in trilogy (Ballantine, Sept)
Elizabeth Tudor as sleuth, 3rd in series (Five Star, June)
Catherine de Valois, Henry V's queen, follows Agincourt Bride (Harper UK, Oct)

Yolande of Aragon, Duchess of Anjou (Constable, Oct)
Elizabeth I & Mary Q of Scots; 5th in Thornleigh saga (Kensington, May)

Alternate history of the Romanovs (St. Martin's Griffin, Oct)

Elizabeth I, Robert Dudley, and singer Lucy Morgan (Berkley, Feb)
Croesus, King of Lydia in the 6th century BC (Atlantic UK, Apr)
Mary Robinson, mistress to the future George IV (Severn House, June)

Edith Swan-Neck, handfasted wife of Harold II (Accent, May)
Katherine de Valois, queen of Henry V (MIRA UK, Mar)
Magda Lupescu, mistress of Carol II of Romania (Severn House, Aug)

Katherine and Mary Grey, Tudor heiresses (Kensington, June)
Prince Jayavar of the Khmer Empire in 12th-c Cambodia (NAL, Feb)
Theodora, Empress of Byzantium (NAL, July)

Book review: The Bookman's Tale: A Novel of Obsession, by Charlie Lovett

Lovett’s enjoyable homage to books and bookishness opens, fittingly, in that literary magnet known as Hay-on-Wye in Wales. In 1995, Peter Byerly, an American book dealer, is living in Oxfordshire after the death of his beloved wife, Amanda. She had served as the link between her shy husband and the social world he dreaded, and now, depressed and lonely, he buries himself in his career. When he finds a Victorian watercolor bearing Amanda’s likeness tucked into an old bookshop volume about Shakespearean forgeries, Peter gets pulled into solving two interrelated mysteries: learning more about the mysterious woman, and finding indisputable proof of the identity of England’s greatest playwright.

The narrative jumps between Peter’s investigation and his touching romance with Amanda in the 1980s, which unfolds in a North Carolina university library. In intervening segments, the plot also dramatizes the lives of the successive owners of a long-lost text, Robert Greene’s Pandosto, which inspired one of Shakespeare’s last plays. The boisterousness of London’s Southwark is shown to good effect in the story of Bartholomew Harbottle, a bookseller who counts many Elizabethan dramatists as his drinking buddies. Not all of the subsequent historical scenes are as interesting; although it’s critical to the puzzle, the final tale of Victorian rivalries feels slightly superficial in comparison. However, anyone who loves literature should like seeing how a book’s provenance comes to life.

Tomb-robbing, blackmail, family secrets, and murder all play a part in this complex work, and with the help of some fortunate coincidences, the pieces all lock together. Lovett, a former antiquarian book dealer, obviously knows his stuff, and his readers will get a fun education in the rare book trade. With its comfortable style, The Bookman’s Tale is more charming than suspenseful, but just as one would hope for with a novel about books, it’s a pleasure to read.

The Bookman's Tale will appear on May 28th from Viking ($27.95/C$29.50, hb, 352pp).  Alma Books publishes it in the UK in July (£7.99). This was one I chose to cover for May's Historical Novels Review.  It was just picked as the latest title in the Barnes & Noble Recommends program, so expect to see a lot of it at your local B&N.

Nuns and Mothers: A guest post by Sarah Kennedy, author of the Altarpiece (plus giveaway)

Sarah Kennedy, author of The Altarpiece, is here at the blog today with a thoughtful essay about the concept of motherhood in Renaissance convents.  Her main character, Catherine Havens, is a nun in remote northern Yorkshire during a perilous time: Henry VIII's Dissolution of the Monasteries.  Catherine and a fellow sister come under suspicion when their priory's altarpiece disappears. 

The Altarpiece (Knox Robinson, March 2013, $25.99) is the first novel in the Crown and Cross series.  We have a giveaway opportunity at the end as well (for US readers).

~

Nuns and Mothers
Sarah Kennedy

When I created Catherine Havens, the main character of The Altarpiece, I made her parentage uncertain. She’s lived her whole life in the convent, under the eyes of the prioress, Christina, and the oldest nun, Veronica. I wanted Catherine’s life to be woman-centered as a way of rethinking the roles of parents in Renaissance Europe.

Most Early Modern women were governed by their fathers and husbands, but life in the convent could be the exception. We sometimes think of convent life as constrained, and of course it was controlled and demanding. But in addition to providing (1) an escape from unwanted marriage, (2) some safety from contagious disease, (3) an opportunity for education beyond the traditional female accomplishments of sewing and music, and (4) positions of real power, nunneries made the mother the primary parent.

The Father was still present, but God the Father was in heaven rather than the next room. Every convent required the services of at least one priest, but he neither lived within their walls nor oversaw much of the daily administration. The Husband of these “brides of Christ” was also in heaven and was always perfect, mild, and loving.

But the Mother? The second parent in the secular world, she was dominant in the convent in the figure of the abbess or the prioress. In heaven, the Mother of God was a compassionate and accessible figure. If God dealt punishment to sinners, Mary might be petitioned to intervene on behalf of His suffering children. Even Jesus was seen as a mother, most famously by the mystic Julian of Norwich. In my convent, the titular altarpiece features an image of Mary, and this would not have been unusual. Catherine has, as she says, “prayed under Her eyes” all of her life. It should be no surprise, then, that Catherine believes that she can make decisions about her beliefs and her desires without consulting a father.

Some abbesses no doubt took advantage of their power (Hildegard of Bingen was notoriously cruel to novices and lay sisters), but a good Mother had more influence than anyone else in the convent. Not every nun could aspire to her authority, but the precedent was there, and women did find expressions of their creative, political, and personal ambitions through the female hierarchy of the pre-Reformation convents, as Catherine does in her work as a healer and a compiler of medical books.

The critic Joan Kelly, back in 1977, provocatively asked whether women had a Renaissance. She concluded that while men were exploring the “new learning,” Protestant women were relegated to secondary positions—with no respectable alternative. Husbands were recast as domestic religious authorities in the place of priests. Unmarried women were condemned, as Shakespeare’s Beatrice says, to “lead apes in hell.”

And this is, in part, why the notion of the Mother is so important to my nun. She’s Mother of God and living woman, model of power and learning. The ideal Protestant mother soon became the “angel in the house”: submissive, selfless, and silent. She was perfectly secondary, which, of course, no real woman is. What I wanted to recreate was a complex, true set of Mothers who work and love and, yes, sin as all of us do, even in the house of God.

~

Credit: Sarah Kennedy

Sarah Kennedy is a professor of English at Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, Virginia and the author of seven books of poems.

She holds a PhD in Renaissance Literature and an MFA in Creative Writing.

Sarah has received grants from both the National Endowment for the Arts and the Virginia Commission for the Arts and is currently a contributing editor for Shenandoah.

Sarah will publish a series of novels with Knox Robinson centering around the sixteenth century closure of the monasteries and convents of England by King Henry VIII.  Visit her website at http://sarahkennedybooks.wordpress.com.

For a chance to win a copy of The Altarpiece (to be mailed out by the author's publicist), please fill out the form below.  Open to US readers.  The winner will be selected by the random number generator at Random.org; deadline Friday, May 24th.

Book review: Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald, by Therese Anne Fowler

An intimate portrait of a flamboyantly public marriage, Z imagines Zelda Fitzgerald’s voice in this exhilarating account of a life lived in decadent, full color. During the Jazz Age, Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald personified the era’s reckless abandon. Their decades-long love story played out in New York and Europe as they attended parties, spent wads of cash, and fought their inner demons and each other as they struggled to create art of their own. Their union derailed into excessive drinking (his), mental illness (hers), and mutual accusations of thwarted ambition. It’s clear from the beginning that the momentum could never have lasted, but the telling makes for great escapism.

Zelda narrates her own tale, beginning as an uninhibited Alabama teenager and moving through her marriage to an ambitious, as-yet-unknown writer, their years of notoriety, the birth of daughter Scottie, and their final tragic decline. Perhaps Fowler has filed some edges off the real Zelda’s personality to make her more sympathetic, but her daring and confidence still leap from the page.

The characterization avoids stereotypes, and all the name-dropping is done with purpose. Their social circle includes H. L. Mencken, Cole Porter, and Ernest Hemingway, the latter an attention-seeking “extra-manly man” whose complicated relationship with both Fitzgeralds is envisioned brilliantly (and controversially, no doubt). No major segments of their marriage are omitted, but the plot has a constant forward motion that ensures the reading is never dull.

The novel deftly explores the uneasy intersections between literature and real life, with Zelda embodying the brashness and style of Scott’s flapper heroines, and Zelda’s uphill battle for artistic acceptance is convincing and heartfelt. To earn them more money, her published writings were often credited at least partially to him, which she was deeply conflicted about – understandably so. With her engrossing novel about an unconventional heroine, Fowler makes a persuasive case that Zelda deserves to stand in her own spotlight.

This review was written up for May's Historical Novels Review, which was a spur-of-the-moment decision.  I had gotten a galley from a Shelf Awareness ad and picked it up after finishing several rather intense literary novels. I was eager to learn more about Zelda and be entertained. Then I got sucked into the story, and after determining that HNR hadn't gotten a copy of the book yet, I figured I should review it.

Therese Anne Fowler's Z was published by St. Martin's Press in April ($25.99/C$29.99, hb, 375pp).

Why Nadya—but not Wallis? A guest post by Kat Meads, author of For You, Madam Lenin

Why do some subjects lend themselves well to fictional treatment while others don't?  This, of course, is a question that all novelists must work out for themselves.  Kat Meads is visiting the blog today with an essay that explores this complex issue and provides insight into her own decision-making process.

Kat's novel For You, Madam Lenin examines the life of Nadya Krupskaya, a Bolshevik revolutionary who married her fellow comrade Vladimir Lenin.  Reviewing for the Historical Novels Review, Elena Maria Vidal wrote:  "Kat Meads' exquisite prose brings to life one of the most determined and enigmatic women in history in a story which exemplifies with irony, pathos and dark humor that there is no tragedy like a Russian tragedy."  For You, Madam Lenin recently took home a silver medal in the IPPY Awards and was a finalist for the ForeWord Book of the Year. 

~

Why Nadya—but not Wallis? 

Kat Meads

I spent eight years and then some researching, writing, revising and publishing For You, Madam Lenin (Livingston Press, 2012), a novel whose principal characters are Nadya Krupskaya and her mother, Yelizaveta (not the more famous fellow they hung about with). The novel I spent three years researching, outlining, starting, stopping and brooding over was supposed to feature Wallis Warfield Spencer Simpson Windsor, a woman who became, in the course of her lifetime, a personage at least as famous as the fellow who renounced the throne on her behalf.

Which made and makes me wonder: did degree of real-life famousness turn out to be a deciding factor in which character I kept with, which novel I finished and which I scuttled?

A story too well known, too familiar, resisting fictional recast?

Makes sense.

Because if the historical record has already revealed the secrets, exposed the dark corners, filled in the missing blanks, there would be—would have to be—fewer mysteries going in, less need to invent, less incentive, one might say, for the fictioneer to whip up fiction.

Did Wallis Windsor’s universal notoriety ultimately put me off my own project?

I don’t think it helped.

In retrospect, I honestly don’t think it did.

Prior to starting in on Madam Lenin, I do remember this motivator: write a “bigger” novel. Bigger in terms of page count, character count, narrative scope, narrative time. My previous novels’ timeframes were fairly limited. The Invented Life of Kitty Duncan covers twenty years, give or take; Sleep, a few months; when the dust finally settles, a few weeks. Madam Lenin’s plot is driven by 50-odd years of turbulent Russian history and peopled by three times as many characters as my usual fictional cast. It’s a book that starts in the 1890s, that takes place in countries not my own, a book about revolution(s). Revolutions are not solitary affairs. Anytime I wanted a break from writing about Nadya K, I could write about Inessa Armand, Nadya’s comrade and rival for Lenin’s affections. Or about Fanny Kaplan, the woman accused of shooting Lenin in 1918. Or about the tsarina. Or, or, or. In the Wallis novel as conceived, Wallis was front and center, dominating every page.

Did I lose faith in that singular focus, grow tired of the company of the self-absorbed Wallis?

Maybe so.

The writer James Houston once told me: “One of the things young writers don’t understand is that you have to enjoy your own company. You have to be okay with being alone at your desk for long stretches of time.”

I’d add to that you have to be okay with spending long stretches with your characters. You don’t have to like them, but they do have to hold your interest. Because if they don’t hold your interest, what chance do they have of holding a reader’s?

No chance is the definitive answer to that.

When I sift through the whys of my original attraction to Nadya Krupskaya and Wallis Warfield as characters, the list turns up a few similarities, a few stark differences. Nadya Krupskaya was a politically radical, politically committed female, young and old. Wallis Warfield was a Southerner turned duchess, petrified of poverty, young and old. Both were intent on changing something: Nadya, a country; Wallis, the uncertain nature of her own future. Both women were exceedingly skilled at holding grudges. Both, young and younger, had lost their fathers, an absence that intensified their relationships with their mothers. I have long written about mothers and daughters. I am Southern. And yet I was only able to go the distance with the Russian mother/daughter pair, not my regional affiliates.

Was it a matter of perseverance, determination, grit and grind? If I’d kept pushing my Wallis idea, would I eventually have figured out a way to write my unwritten novel?

Doubtful.

More importantly: would I have been satisfied with the result?

More doubtful still.

Even now, when I think of Wallis Warfield Windsor, I recall what others have written about her—not my ideas, my notion of spin. I was never able to make/remake Wallis into “my” character, my “creature.” Wallis resisted my manipulations. She stubbornly remained Wallis, a woman in history.

Nadya Krupskaya?

The flesh and blood NK who inspired the novel?

She’s gone. Utterly displaced and replaced by NK The Character in my head. Ask me anything about NK The Character, and I’ll answer promptly. Ask one of those “Did that really happen?” questions and I’m likely to hem and haw. Because, frankly, I can no longer easily remember what is true and what I invented. The same applies to Russian Revolution specifics. Once upon a time, I could do fair justice to Edmund Wilson’s account of the Bolsheviks’ reception at Finland Station; now I’m a For You, Madam Lenin expert, period.

Safe to say: for me to claim to know a novel inside out, upside down, sideways and aslant, that novel has to exist.

And that, at least, the Madam does.

She does exist.

~

  
For You, Madam Lenin was published by Livingston Press of the University of West Alabama in October 2012 ($19.99, trade pb, 283pp).  Find it on Goodreads and on Amazon.  Visit Kat Meads' website at www.katmeads.com.

Historical fiction picks at BEA 2013

Update:  This post was last updated May 22nd with new info from Random House's BEA schedule; previously updated May 19th with Kirkus Reviews' BEA Issue and Publishers Lunch's Buzz Books 2013 guide.  New entries are marked with ~new~. 

Here we are with our annual look at the historical novels being promoted at BEA in a few weeks.  There are a lot of them for 2013 – this isn't always the case – and I'm writing this post with deep envy because I won't be there myself (sob!).  I'll be attending HNS and ALA, though, and figured two conferences in the same month was my limit.  I hope the publishers will be saving some of these galleys for the library crowd in late June...

This post will be updated when new listings are posted at the BEA site and if/when Library Journal's galley guide is released, so watch this space.  For now, I'm basing my listings on the BEA Show Planner, which is its usual cumbersome self, and the "galleys to grab" articles and ads in the 4/29 Publishers Weekly.  I've added blurbs, booth numbers, stuff like that.  For authors with historical novels at BEA who I neglected to include, please leave a note in the comments or drop me an email.  As always, I recommend cross-checking these dates/times with the BEA site or your program book before hitting the show to avoid possible disappointment.

For those of you who will be at BEA, have a great time!


~Galleys to Grab~

Algonquin (booth 839)
Lee Smith, Guests on Earth - literary fiction about a young woman in a '30s North Carolina mental institution, where she meets Zelda Fitzgerald. Oct.

Bellevue Literary Press (booth 1105B)
Melissa Pritchard, Palmerino - literary fiction about Vernon Lee (nee Violet Paget), supernatural fiction writer, set a century ago and today.  Jan '14.

Counterpoint (booth 1335)
Lily Brett, Lola Bensky - an  Australian rock journalist hits the London music scene in 1967.  Sept.

Farrar Straus & Giroux (booth 1557)
Nicola Griffith, Hild - literary biographical novel of St. Hilda of Whitby in 7th-century England, from a multi-award winning writer.  Nov.

Hachette (booth 1829)
Hannah Kent, Burial Rites - literary fiction surrounding a woman accused of murder in 1829 Iceland; debut novel based on a true story.  Little, Brown, Sept.
Kathleen Kent, The Outcasts - a woman on the run in the 19th-century West, from the author of The Heretic's Daughter and The Traitor's Wife/The Wolves of Andover.  Little, Brown, Oct.
~new~ Kim Stanley Robinson, Shaman - a young man's coming of age and a tale of prehistoric life 30,000 years ago.  Orbit, Sept.
C.J. Sansom, Dominion - alternate history set in the 1950s in which the Nazis rule Britain. Mulholland, Jan '14.
~new~ Daniel Woodrell, The Maid's Version - a deadly dance hall fire in 1929 Missouri and its long-term repercussions. Little, Brown, Sept.

Harlequin (booth 1238-39)
Loretta Nyhan and Suzanne Hayes, I'll Be Seeing You - epistolary WWII novel. May.
Shona Patel, Teatime for the Firefly - love story set amid India's tea plantations in the '40s.  Sept.

HarperCollins (booth 2038-39)
Amy Tan, The Valley of Amazement - three generations of women, from 19th-century San Francisco to turn-of-the-century Shanghai and after.  Tan will be speaking at the Library Journal Day of Dialog.  Nov.
Simon Van Booy, The Illusion of Separateness - one man's act of mercy during WWII changes many lives.  June.

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (booth 1657)
Oliver Poetzsch, The Ludwig Conspiracy - modern mystery surrounding Ludwig, the late 19th-century "mad king" of Bavaria. Sept.

Milkweed (booth 1333A)
Larry Watson, Let Him Go - literary fiction set in 1952 North Dakota; a  retired sheriff and his wife go after their missing grandson.  Sept.

Overlook (booth 1509)
Andrew Rosenheim, The Little Tokyo Informant -WWII thriller set just before Pearl Harbor.  Sept.

Penguin (booth 1520-21)
~new~ Elizabeth Gilbert, The Signature of All Things - a sweeping epic about a female botanist in 19th-century America and beyond.  Viking, Oct.  She will be doing a BEA signing (date/time TBA).
Sarah Jio, Morning Glory - dual-period mystery set in a Seattle houseboat community in 1959 and today.  Plume, Dec. 

Random House (booth 2739) - Most of these authors will be signing at BEA.  See section below for times.

Jo Baker, Longbourn - a reimagining of Pride & Prejudice from the servants' viewpoint. Knopf, Oct.

Rhidian Brook, The Aftermath - literary fiction about British-German relations set in a defeated Hamburg, Germany, after WWII.  Knopf, Sept.

Jamie Ford, Songs of Willow Frost - mother-son story in 1920s & Depression-era Seattle.  Ballantine, Sept. 

~new~ Diana Gabaldon, pre-pub booklet with first seven chapters of Written in My Own Heart's Blood.  Giveaway June 1st.

Nancy Horan, Under the Wide and Starry Sky - Robert Louis Stevenson and his wife, from the author of the bestselling Loving Frank.  Ballantine, Jan '14.
~new~ Jonathan Lethem, Dissident Gardens - "an epic yet intimate family saga about three generations of all-American radicals."  Doubleday, Sept.

Colum McCann, Transatlantic - three transatlantic crossings, spanning two centuries, linked by three women.  Random House, June.
~new~ Hanya Yanigihara, The People in the Trees - anthropological adventure and its tragic aftereffects as cultures clash in 1950s Micronesia.  Doubleday, Sept.

St. Martin's Press (booth 1556-57)
~new~ Diane Chamberlain, Necessary Lies - on a small North Carolina tobacco farm 50 years ago, long-held family secrets begin to erupt.  Sept.

Simon & Schuster (booth 2638-39)
Lynn Cullen, Mrs. Poe - on Frances Osgood's affair with the famed writer.  Gallery, Sept.
Thomas Keneally, Daughters of Mars - Australian nurses in WWI Europe.  Atria, Sept.
Kate Manning, My Notorious Life - a controversial midwife in 19th-century NYC.  Scribner, Sept.
~new~ Jayne Anne Phillips, Quiet Dell - literary crime novel about a Depression-era con man that preyed on widows, based on a true story. Scribner, Oct.
Indu Sundaresan, The Mountain of Light - epic novel about diamond hunters in Victorian India.  Atria, Oct.

Sourcebooks (booth 829)
Charles Belfoure, The Paris Architect - an architect reluctantly helps hide Jews from the Nazis in occupied Paris.  Oct.

W.W. Norton (booth 1920-21)
P.S. Duffy, The Cartographer of No Man's Land - literary fiction about a family divided by WWI, set in Nova Scotia and France.  Liveright, Nov.

~Author Signings~

Note: Table signings are in the traditional autographing area in the back of the exhibit hall.  Booth signings are at the publishers' booths in the main exhibit area.

Thursday, May 30th

11am-noon
Kathleen Kent, The Outcasts - see above under Little, Brown. (table 1)
~new~ Nancy Horan, Under the Wide and Starry Sky - see above under Random House. (booth 2739)

Noon-12:30pm (table 15)
Simon Van Booy, The Illusion of Separateness - see above under HarperCollins.

~new~ Noon-1pm (booth 2739)
Dennis McFarland, Nostalgia - literary Civil War novel.

1-1:30pm (table 2)
Annapurna Potluri, The Grammarian - a French linguist travels to 1911 India and runs into a cultural divide.  See my review.  Feb '13 (already out).

1-2pm (table 14)
Sarah Jio, The Last Camellia - dual-period mystery (WWII and modern day) surrounding a rare flower found on an English country estate.  Plume, May.

~new~1:30pm-2:30pm (booth 2739)
Jonathan Lethem, Dissident Gardens - see above under Random House.

~new~ 3-3:30pm (booth 2893)
John MillikenThompson, Love and Lament - literary fiction set in post-Civil War North Carolina.  Other Press, June.

3-4pm (table 7)
Shona Patel, Teatime for the Firefly - see above under Harlequin.

Friday, May 31st

9-10am (booth 2739, Random House)
~new~ Rhidian Brook, The Aftermath - see above under Random House.
~new~ Jo Baker, Longbourn - ditto

10-10:30am (table 15)
Philipp Meyer, The Son -"An epic, multigenerational saga of power, blood, and land" beginning in 19th-century Texas.  Ecco, June.

10-11am
~new~ Shona Patel, Teatime for the Firefly - see above under Harlequin. (booth 1238-39, Harlequin)
~new~ Jamie Ford, Songs of Willow Frost - see above under Random House.  (booth 2739, Random House)

10:30am (booth 839, Algonquin)
Lee Smith, Guests on Earth - see above.


11am-noon
Elizabeth Wein, Rose Under Fire - the companion novel to Code Name Verity.  Not just for YAs.  Disney-Hyperion, Sept. (table 4)
Maile Meloy, The Apprentices, sequel to The Apothecary, which was YA fiction set in Cold War London.  Putnam, June. (table 21)

11:30am (booth 1321, Grove/Atlantic)
Kent Wascom, The Blood of Heaven - literary epic of the southern frontier in the early 19th century.  June.

1-2pm (table 3)
Larry Watson, Let Him Go - see above under Milkweed.

2-3pm
Jack Gantos, From Norvelt to Nowhere - sequel to his Newbery-winning Dead End in Norvelt.  YA.  FSG, Sept.  (table 23)
Kirby Larson, Duke - WWII story about a boy and his dog. Ages 8 and up. Scholastic, Aug. (table 16)
~new~ Nicola Griffith, Hild - see above under Farrar Straus & Giroux.  (booth 1557, FSG)

2:30-3pm (table 9)
M.J. Rose, Seduction - multi-period suspense involving Victor Hugo's lost journal.  MIRA, May.

3pm-4pm (table 16)
Eliot Pattison, Bone Rattler - historical mystery set aboard a prison ship bound for the American colonies. Counterpoint (this has been out for a while; I wonder if this is the correct title).

Saturday, June 1st

10am (booth 1509, Algonquin)
Peter Quinn, Dry Bones - literary WWII thriller about an ill-fated OSS mission into the heart of the Eastern front.

~new~ 11:30am-12:30pm (booth 2739, Random House)
Diana Gabaldon, Written in My Own Heart's Blood - see above under Random House (reportedly pre-pub booklet with first seven chapters)

~new~ 12-1pm (booth 2739, Random House)
Colum McCann, Transatlantic - see above under publisher.

An interview with Anne Easter Smith, author of Royal Mistress

Historical novelist Anne Easter Smith is passionate about her chosen era: the 15th-century Wars of the Roses.  Whether you're reading one of her novels or speaking with her for an interview, as here, it's easy to get caught up in her enthusiasm.  Her newest biographical novel Royal Mistress introduces readers to Elizabeth "Jane" Shore, a beautiful and spirited silk merchant's daughter who becomes Edward IV's last and favorite mistress.

In true epic fashion, Anne interweaves the viewpoints not only of Jane but of many others in the royal circle to give readers a wide-ranging look at these characters and the tumultuous times they lived through.  Jane is a determined survivor whose good-hearted nature captures the heart of several high-ranking men and also makes her a fun and sympathetic heroine to follow on her adventures.  With Royal Mistress just published, I took the opportunity to ask Anne some questions about her characters, the history, and the writing process. 

This is your 5th historical novel set during the Wars of the Roses, and you're obviously very comfortable with the period and its major players. As you were writing Royal Mistress, did you find your characters – even ones you've written about before – were still able to surprise you?

They always do, thank goodness, or I would be bored writing about them! In Royal Mistress it was Richard of Gloucester – "my Richard" I call him – who surprised me. I had to see him through Jane’s eyes, and he was not very kind to Jane – for his own rational reasons, although others saw it differently. William Hastings also surprised me, because though I knew he was always loyal to Edward, I had always found him rather pompous and certainly lecherous. He ended up being the most genuine in his love for Jane.

On account of his impotence, Jane attempts to secure an annulment from her husband William Shore through the church. While a valid option, this must have been an unusual step for a woman of her era to take. How unusual was it? Are there other examples you can point to?

Jane Shore, late 18th-century portrait

You are right. It was very unusual, and because there is no record that Jane and William were submitted to “the test,” we believe Edward may have smoothed the way for Jane. However, the record shows that Jane did appeal to the church for an annulment and it was granted three months later. Even though it might seem women had no rights back then, their marriage vows did entitle them to an expectation of marital intimacy and the chance of motherhood. The test for impotence I mentioned is detailed in the 12th-century lawbook written by Thomas of Chobham that was still consulted, and requires that a certain number of wise matrons surround a couple’s bed and watch while the wife tries to arouse her husband. If the effort proves futile, then the wife is given the go-ahead to petition the church for the annulment.

Jane takes pride in her status as a freewoman of the City of London. What privileges or rights would this have entitled her to?

I’m borrowing information that I found during a visit to the wonderful Museum of London. If you haven’t discovered it yet, you should!

“Freemen, or women, in London were were a privileged class; it is estimated that only about 1 in 4 of London men was a freeman. You became a freeman either by being born to parents who were one, by completing a trade apprenticeship, through paying a sum of money or, if you were a woman, by marrying a freeman. The rights of freemen and women included setting up a shop or running a business within the City.”

I also found that one of the privileges was they could choose where they were imprisoned.

Jane is good-hearted, loving, sensual, witty, and beautiful, and she doesn't make unreasonable demands on King Edward. She's known throughout London for using her position to help the less fortunate, and she does her best to stay away from politics – and the queen! Would you consider her an ideal royal mistress, or is there such a thing?

I would say she was an ideal mistress. She was not “kept” at the palace and so the queen did not have to face her rival every day, as was common with other kings’ mistresses. We are told she was not demanding, and unlike Alice Perrers, who was Edward III’s long-time mistress, she did not get given land or estates. I was confused by a review in the Historical Novels Review that called her “infamous,” which is a word that connotes “despicable, wicked, dishonorable” to me. Jane was none of those. Every single description that has come down to us of her is that she was kindhearted, pleasant, never harmed anyone and showed great humility during her penance. I thought I had conveyed those characteristics in the book, but perhaps I’m wrong!

"The Penance of Jane Shore" by William Blake (c1780)

The period expressions scattered throughout the novel added a lot of color, like the exclamation "By Christ's nails!" or even the word "wagtail" as an uncomplimentary way of describing Jane. What are some of your favorites?

I like using old-fashioned words as well as turning sentences around so they sound more period. I enjoy being transported back into another world myself when I read historicals, and I think dialogue can help effect this. The old use of “aye” and “nay,” which we don’t use today (unless you’re in Scotland!); and words like “heed,” “addle,” “spawn” and “monstrous” come to mind as some we don’t use in our everyday language anymore. A couple of my favorites, which I confess to borrowing from Shakespeare are “bum-bailey” for a jerk, “clack-dish” and clatterer” for a chatterbox or gossip, and your above-mentioned “wagtail.” (I know Shakespeare is 16th century, but as there was very little written down in vernacular English before the famous Elizabethan playwrights, I feel many of those words were already used long before they wrote their plays down.)

Sophie Vandersand is Jane's good friend, and they help each other out on several occasions. How did you go about inventing Sophie's character and background?

Funny you should ask! To support the Newburyport Historical Society, I agreed to donate an auction item to name a character after the high bidder in my next book. My only condition was that the name had to fit in with 15th century London life. In other words, someone named Tiffany Wolinski or Cindy Wu would not do! The woman who won the item asked that instead of using her that I name a character after her six-year-old granddaughter Sophia Van Der Sande. In the 14th and 15th centuries, London had a sizeable community of Flemish weavers, who arrived with their craft to take advantage of the English wool trade. So I researched where many of those weavers would have lived and worked and gave her a more anglicized name, which after a century of living in London, would have been plausible. Et voila, Sophia or Sophie Vandersand was born.

Royal Mistress loops in many viewpoints in addition to Jane's, from her lovers and husbands to Richard III and even George of Clarence, drinking himself into oblivion just before his ignominious death in a wine barrel. Are there any whose scenes you enjoyed writing the most, or which were more difficult to conceptualize than others?

Richard III

Golly, you ask in-depth questions! Yes, the scene in the Tower the day that Richard of Gloucester called Hastings to task for “treachery” was the hardest. I had to see it from Hastings’s point of view, who considered himself innocent, and from Richard’s who was convinced he was guilty. Both were being true to themselves in my opinion, but the outcome was heartbreaking for me to write even though I understood Richard’s motivation. (Enough of spoilers; don’t forget you have already read the book, Sarah!)

Thanks, Anne – that should give readers a hint about a scene to anticipate!  Things have been quite busy for you writing-wise, with five novels published since 2006.  I'm curious to learn how your writing process has changed since publication of A Rose for the Crown.

I realize I had no idea what I was doing when I wrote Rose! I have since learned about structure, themes, motifs, etc. etc. and how to sequence big scenes and where the climax should be! Sounds simple, right, but I had never had a formal writing class in my life (other than learning grammar at British boarding school), so I’ve come a long way, baby! Funnily enough, however, I get more letters saying that Rose is still their favorite of my books.

Thanks for hosting me today, Sarah.

Thanks again, Anne, for taking the time to answer my questions!

~

Royal Mistress was published by Touchstone/Simon & Schuster in May at $16.00, or $18.99 in Canada (trade pb, 489pp, including glossary, author's note, and discussion questions).  Visit Anne Easter Smith's website at www.anneeastersmith.com , which includes an entertaining blog entry in which the author interviews her main character.