Take 5: Kitty Bennet’s Diary
By Anna Elliott | April 19, 2013 |
This past month, Kitty Bennet’s Diary, the third book in my Pride and Prejudice Chronicles, released. Thanks so much to everyone here at WU for letting me share a bit about the book here!
Q: What’s the premise of your novel? Kitty Bennet’s Diary is the third of my diary-format imagined sequels to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. The story focuses on Kitty Bennet, younger sister to Elizabeth Bennet. To quote the back cover copy:
Kitty Bennet is finished with love and romance. She lost her one-time fiance in the Battle of Waterloo, and in the battle’s aftermath saw more ugliness and suffering than she could bear. Staying with her Aunt and Uncle Gardiner in London for the winter, Kitty throws her energies into finding a husband for her hopelessly bookish sister Mary, and discovering whatever mysterious trouble is worrying her sister Jane. But then she meets Mr. Lancelot Dalton, a handsome clergyman with a shadowed past–and discovers that though she may be finished with love, love may not be at all finished with her.
Q: What would you like people to know about the story itself? A little-known bit of Jane Austen lore is that according to accounts by Austen’s brother, she actually shared with her family a bit about what she imagined for the cast of characters in Pride and Prejudice after the official close of the novel. The basis for Kitty Bennet’s Diary was in fact the details Jane Austen shared with her family about Kitty and Mary Bennet’s eventual fates. It tremendously fun– and a tremendous privilege, too– to get to write both Kitty and Mary towards the endings that Jane Austen herself imagined for them. I hope Austen would approve of the road I had them travel to get there!
Q: What do your characters have to overcome in this story? What challenge do you set before them? Kitty has to overcome quite a bit in the course of the story, her own guilt over her past mistakes and behavior being her greatest challenge to overcome. She has to struggle to forgive herself, as well as learn to live with the memories of all she witnessed during the Battle of Waterloo.
Q: What unique challenges did this book pose for you, if any? Kitty is probably the most flawed main character I have ever written, so my challenge was to make sure that she was still appealing and likable, even though she is far from perfect. I hope I succeeded; I at least came to like Kitty a great deal. I actually miss her now that I’ve finished writing her story– even though I truly love the place where I left her.
Q: What has been the most rewarding aspect of having written this book? Really the most rewarding aspect of writing all 3 of my Pride and Prejudice-inspired books was getting to live in my imagination inside the Regency landscape of Jane Austen’s story, with the beloved characters she created. I’ve loved Pride and Prejudice ever since I first read it as a teenager, and felt so privileged every day to get to spend time inside that world as I wrote.
Anna Elliott is an author of historical fiction and fantasy. Her first series, the Twilight of Avalon trilogy, is a retelling of the Trystan and Isolde legend. She wrote her second series, the Pride and Prejudice Chronicles, chiefly to satisfy her own curiosity about what might have happened to Elizabeth Bennet, Mr. Darcy, and all the other wonderful cast of characters after the official end of Jane Austen’s classic work. She enjoys stories about strong women, and loves exploring the multitude of ways women can find their unique strengths. Anna lives in the Washington DC area with her husband and three children.
Congrats, Anna. I wish you all the success in the world.
Denise Willson
Author of A Keeper’s Truth
Thanks so much, Denise!
Kitty is the forgotten Bennet sister and a great subject for a book. Good luck and beautiful cover.
Thank you! The credit for the cover goes to my husband. :)
“I’ve loved Pride and Prejudice ever since I first read it as a teenager, and felt so privileged every day to get to spend time inside that world as I wrote.”
How inspiring! Congrats and best wishes with it, Anna!
Thanks, Vaughn! Whether the writing was going great or making my want to pull my hair (would that there weren’t those days, but that’s how this game goes), I truly did feel so lucky to be getting to imagine myself into Jane Austen’s world every single day I sat down to work.
Great reviews on Amazon! Continued success!
Thank you, Carmel!
I loved Pride and Prejudice and absolutely love this concept for a series. Your books are going on my TBR list today!
Congratulations … and, what are you writing next?
Thanks so much, Julie, I hope you enjoy them! Right now, I’m working on a Sense and Sensibility sequel (Margaret Dashwood’s Diary), due out hopefully this summer.
Congratulations on your new book, Anna!
Thank you, Therese!
Congrats, Anna! Glad you shared some of the backgrounder to your novel here. :)
Thanks, Patricia!
Wonderful idea!
thank you!
Congrats on the new book! I just love Pride & Prejudice and wish you much success.
Thank you, Jennifer! Pride and Prejudice truly is timeless magic.
Sounds awesome – congrats Anne! I’m curious as to how you got hold of the notes from Jane Austin; if you wrote these and pitched them yourself, or if you were chosen to write them based on what JA imagined for her characters. In other words, I like backstory! Thanks!
Hi Kimberley!
I’ve read the snippets about what Jane Austen imagined for the characters several places . . . biographies, my annotated copy of P&P . . . I believe the original source is the biographical notes her brother James wrote & published after her death.
And the copyright on Jane Austen’s books is long since expired, so no, there was no ‘Austen family trust’ commissioning me to write sequels or anything like that– just my own idea due to the characters getting noisy in my imagination. :)
I can’t wait to read this book–especially, after reading your post here, to see how you meet that challenge of presenting a flawed main character, as you called Kitty. This is so difficult.
A huge congratulations, Anna.
Thank you, Kate! Flawed characters are definitely challenging, but I found Kitty to be truly one of the most rewarding and just plain fun characters I’ve ever written. Fingers crossed that readers agree, but she really grew close to my heart! :)
This looks fabulous, Anna! Heading off to track down a copy now. :)
Thank you so much, Juliet!!