I have a new book out! Another Austen-inspired novel, like my last, The Making of Margaret Dashwood.  Now available on Amazon.

Miss Jane Fairfax possesses all the beauty and accomplishments that British society admires in a young woman. But, alas, she is an orphan without fortune and unlikely to receive any offers of marriage. She has now come of age, and must leave the care of her guardians, and make her own way in life. She must contract herself out as a governess, a day she hopes will never come.

The unexpected happens when wealthy, charismatic Frank Churchill enters her world, asking her to make him the happiest of men, offering the love and security she desires more than anything. But no one can learn of their engagement, for Mr. Churchill’s aunt will hear of it and surely oppose the match. It must remain a great secret.

But secrets, as readers of Austen novels know, have consequences.

Readers of Emma know some of Jane Fairfax’s story, but she is seen only through the eyes of other characters. How would her story read if the events were told from her perspective?

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Who will she meet, besides the Wilberforce’s, of course. Why, the abolitionist Thomas Clarkson, and Clarkson’s dear friends in the Lake Country, William Wordsworth, his wife Mary, and his sister Dorothy. What will the events of the turbulent early years of the 19th century bring to our dear heroine and her family and friends?

While I was researching for my newest novel, “The Making of Margaret Dashwood,” I ran across authors who influenced Jane Austen’s writings.

Frances Burney was an influential writer during Jane’s lifetime. She is considered a pioneer of novels of manners, witty satires of the foibles of British Georgian society. When only twenty six, Burney wrote her popular novel, “Evelina: or, the History of a Young Ladies’ Entrance into the World,” published in 1778. “Cecilia,” followed in 1782, and “Camilla,” in 1796. The theme of these novels dealt with young ladies’ making their way in society, as does Austen’s own novels. So the great Jane Austen was influenced by the great writers of her time. A novel thought. Just as she influences other authors even more than two hundred years after her own time. Like me.

No one writes or creates in any medium in a vacuum. All are influenced by each other. There is a connecting power in creativity. It is like the wind passing through the air, like musical strains reaching the ear and passing on. Through the whole world and across time. Creativity connects us to each other. That is wondrous.

I’ve been looking up words Austen uses in her novels that I don’t know the meaning of:

Coxcomb: a vain and conceited man, a dandy

Bilious: nausea or vomiting

Piquet: a card game with two players

Tippet: a long fur scarf or shawl worn around the neck and shoulders

Sanguine: optimistic or positive

Cara sposo: a dear husband

Pertinacity: sticking to an opinion or purpose, stubbornly tenacious

Verdure: fresh green color and vegetation

Segacity: discernment, foresight

And this is just the beginning…..

All of her characters have strengths. All of them have weaknesses. Austen captures them all with biting wit. She tells her readers straight out as well as showing through dialogue and action what they are like. Sir Walter Eliot in Persuasion: “Vanity was the beginning and end of Sir Walter Eliot’s character: vanity of person and of situation.” I don’t mind being told. Show don’t tell is drummed into an aspiring writer’s head. Never ever tell. Yet Austen does it. Brilliantly. Satisfactorily. I like it.

Sir Walter’s vanity is revealed even more by the dialogue. After a diatribe against those ordinary men who achieve distinction and riches in the navy while ruining their complexions, appearance being the thing that he most prizes, he says: “Then I take it for granted…that his face is about as orange as the cuffs and capes of my livery.” Austen’s greatest wit comes in the telling. Of the Eliot’s reduced circumstances, Austen states: “Both father and daughter seemed to expect that something should be struck out by one or the other to remove their embarrassments and reduce their expenditure, without involving the loss of any indulgence of taste or pride.”

Jane Austen is a master storyteller, getting her characters into hopeless situations where all is looked to be lost and then in unexpected ways, gets them out again and into perfect happiness. Her books read almost like mysteries, as she reveals bit by bit and turn of page. After the satisfying resolution, when the reader learns all and is assured of a beloved character’s happy future, the book does not end. Austen liked to have detailed conversations between the two lovers where they “clear the air,” a play by play concerning all the misunderstandings that had kept them apart. Persuasion again, as Anne Eliot and Captain Wentworth strolled through the streets of Bath, now certain of their union: “…they could indulge in those explanations of what had directly proceeded the present moment, which were so poignant and so ceaseless in interest. All the little variations of the last week were gone through; and of yesterday and to-day there could scarcely be an end.”

At the conclusion of Persuasion, Austen sums up the situation with her biting wit: “Sir Walter, indeed, though he had no affection for Anne, had no vanity flattered, to make him really happy on the occasion, was very far from thinking it a bad match for her. On the contrary, when he saw more of Captain Wentworth, saw him repeatedly by daylight, and eyed him well, he was very much struck by his personal claims, and felt that his superiority of appearance might not be unfairly balanced against her superiority of rank; and all of this, assisted by his well-sounding name, enabled Sir Walter, at last to prepare his pen, with a very good grace, for the insertion of the marriage in the volume of honour.” I almost see Jane tap her pen upon the period at the end of that sentence in great satisfaction, pick up her paper and read it over again.