Today is the release date of the new book of
Emma Tennant: The French Dancer's Bastard, published by Maia Press. The bastard is Adèle, from Jane Eyre.
Emma Tennant is well-known for her sequels and rewritings of Brontë and Austen books mainly (but not only, check
her bibliography. This half of BrontëBlog read some years ago a fictionalized version of the marriage of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath,
The Ballad of Sylvia and Ted). Almost a year ago,
we published an article covering the recent publishing of her, until now, latest Brontë approach:
Heathcliff's Tale.
Six years ago, she published a first approach to the Jane Eyre background story with Adèle: Jane Eyre's Hidden Story. And now, Emma Tennant revisites her own book and presents a slightly modified version. According to the editors:
This novel is a revised version of 'Adèle', which was published earlier in the USA but not in the UK.
The details are the following (you can compare with
Adèle's synopsis):
‘What do you mean, Jane? I told you I would send Adèle to school; and what do I want with a child for a companion, and not my own child, – a French dancer’s bastard?’ from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë.
In her new novel Emma Tennant tells the story of the shadowy character, Adèle Varens, from Jane Eyre. Little Adèle is only eight when she comes to Thornfield Hall to live with the forbidding Mr Rochester, who may or may not be her father. She longs to return to the glitter of Paris and to the mother who has been lost to her. Her loneliness would be complete were it not for the young governess who arrives to care for her, although Adèle at first regards her with suspicion and dislike.
But there is another shadow hanging over their lives: the dark secret locked away in a high garret. Adèle’s curiosity will imperil them all, shatter their happiness and finally send her fleeing, frightened and alone, back to Paris.
Published to coincide with this autumn’s major four-part drama of Jane Eyre starring Toby Stephens as Mr Rochester and Ruth Wilson as Jane Eyre, Emma Tennant’s new novel casts a surprising new light on Charlotte Brontë’s ever-popular masterpiece.
Next year is scheduled to appear
Thornfield Hall: Jane Eyre's Hidden Story, that we assume is another title for the same book.
Categories: Sequels, Books, Jane_Eyre
Today is the release date of the new book of Emma Tennant: The French Dancer's Bastard, published by Maia Press. The bastard is Adèle, from Jane Eyre.
Publishing Houses will always choose the sensational: when "The French Dancer's Bastard" is Adele, an eight year old child, they have a voluptous corset-clad body in the cover :/
ReplyDeleteHey! I recognize the corset on the cover of the book! It's at the Victoria and Albert Museum. You can see it at their website here:
ReplyDeletehttp://images.vam.ac.uk/images/photo/sch/20030114/high/1021-012.jpg
Of course, it's been dated to 1883, so it's a little ahead of time.
mysticgypsy - it's all very predictable, isn't it? The title, too, is nothing if not sensational. But oh well - it's the inside that counts. And I wonder how that will be.
ReplyDeleteLC - such a photographic memory! Thanks a lot for the link. Each time I see a picture of a corset I actually wonder at the poor women who had to endure that.