Win a signed copy of The Secret Adventures of Charlotte Brontë

***THIS CONTEST IS CLOSED***

The great people at The Overlook Press have agreed to let us give away a signed copy of The Secret Adventures of Charlotte Brontë by Laura John Rowland.

To enter the competition, you only have to answer the following question:

In the summer of which year did Charlotte and Anne Brontë travel to London to meet with their publishers?

The answer must be sent to our e-mail address: bronteblog (AT) gmail (DOT) com (read that aloud if that doesn't look like an e-mail address to you). Answers will be accepted until March 24 (12 am CET). Winners will be notified by e-mail on the ensuing days. We will accept ONE ANSWER ONLY per participant.

Good luck to one and all!

And as if that wasn't enough, Laura Joh Rowland kindly agreed to answer a few Brontë-oriented questions concerning her new book for us. We are quite sure you will find them interesting and full of insight.

Let's start off with a few of the typical questions. How did you discover the Brontës? Which is your favourite work by them?

Come to think of it, I don’t remember! The Brontes are so much a part of our cultural history that they filtered into my mind without my conscious knowledge. Jane Eyre is the favorite that I return to again and again, but I have a special fondness for Villette, which is delightfully strange and intense.

The book is full of very accurate descriptions of places connected with the Brontës - have you been to Haworth and the moors or are the descriptions the product of outstanding research and imagination?

I’m glad you found my descriptions accurate. I’ve never been to Haworth, so I’ve had to depend on research. And of course it’s impossible to visit England in the Brontes’ time, when the world was vastly different from what it is now. Fortunately, I do have good visualization skills, which I’ve sharpened by creating scenery for 13 historical novels.

At any rate, the amount of research is impressive. We suppose you must have read up quite a lot of the Brontës. Which were your favourite research books?

One is Unquiet Soul by Margot Peters, the first biography of Charlotte Bronte that I ever read. It taught me that a biography can be as thrilling as fiction and that Charlotte’s life was as fascinating as her novels. It formed my first sense of her personality. Another is The Brontes by Juliet Barker, a treasure trove of information about all the Brontes, their world, and the people in their lives.

We have noticed that the Sano Ichiro series also features real people - what is it about real people that inspires you to place them in fictional settings rather than creating them from scratch?

Real people add verisimilitude to a story. It’s also fun to interpret their characters and bring them to life for my readers. But I do mix them with characters that I create from scratch, because those are fun, too. My books are fiction, and they stray wildly from biographical fact.

Charlotte Brontë and her family are better-known than the Sano Ichiro protagonists, at least to us, at least in the Western civilization. Do you think the general public will be able to achieve the degree of suspension of disbelief the book requires from them when it decontextualises the Brontës more and more as the book advances?

I’ve been aware from the start that many folks are well informed about the Brontes and that by writing fiction about them I would be pushing the limits of what readers would believe Charlotte and her family would or wouldn’t do. The Secret Adventures of Charlotte Bronte racked up 30-plus rejections before it sold, many due to editors finding the story implausible because it didn’t fit their notions of the Brontes. But the book has gotten some good reviews, and I dare to think that once it draws readers in, they’ll stick with it for the whole ride.

When did you realise or decide that Charlotte Brontë - aided by her siblings - would make such a good heroine?

More than 10 years ago, when I started playing with ideas for a book outside my Sano series. I was so busy with the series that it took ages to come up with a plot and write my book about Charlotte.

Is Charlotte Brontë your 'favourite' Brontë sister or is it any of the other siblings?

Definitely Charlotte. I love her combination of talent, burning ambition, and vulnerability.

We have heard that parts of the book had to be left out, particularly as far as Emily was concerned. This is not noticeable when reading the book, but do you think we will be seeing those fragments in the future? Will we be seeing more of Emily despite the action of the book taking place only months before her death?

The original version had a subplot that dealt with Emily’s Gondal fantasy life. I was quite fond of that material, but my editor felt that it didn’t fit into the book, and I have to agree that the flow is better without it. I do hope to see the material in print someday, perhaps in a prequel that stars Emily as the heroine.

Your book is full of (secret) adventures, but you know they sometimes say that reality surpasses fiction. Did you discover something about any of them while researching for the book that you wouldn't have expected/suspected?

The story of Charlotte’s relationship with Monsieur Heger was a surprise. Not just the fact that she was in love with him, but that he informed and influenced her writing. A popular notion about the Brontes is that their sheer, native talent produced their great, classic novels out of nowhere. As an author who’s interested in how other authors mastered their craft, I was delighted to learn that Charlotte had a mentor, as I myself did.

Is there any part of the book which you found it more difficult to write for whatever reason? If so, which and why?

The most difficult part was coming up with a plot that placed Charlotte Bronte in the context of the larger world. I knew I didn’t want to write a little village mystery set entirely in Haworth and limited to the sort of characters and situations found there. Fortunately, 1848 was an interesting year, and Britain’s status as an imperialistic power furnished some great possibilities, including the China angle and the opium trade.

One of the characters in the book is highly reminiscent of Fu Manchu - did you write him like that on purpose or has it been an unconscious influence?

I never intended Kuan to resemble Fu Manchu, although I am aware that readers might see him that way. There’s a dearth of well known Asian characters in Western fiction. The two that most people are familiar with are Fu Manchu and Charlie Chan. Any male Asian villain who’s a sinister criminal mastermind—well, you can guess which stereotype he’ll be pegged to. I tried to give Kuan more depth, and a more justifiable motivation, than the traditional stereotypes.

Do you think we will be seeing more 'secret adventures' of Charlotte Brontë in the future? Will there be spinoffs?

I certainly hope so. It depends very much on how well this book sells.

A big thank you to Laura Joh Rowland for taking the time to reply to our questions.

Categories: Books, Charlotte Brontë, Contest, Fiction