Exclusive interview with author Joanne Limburg about her new novel about Queen Anne
By Gabrielle Pantera
“Many years ago, I was watching a documentary about royals, disease and doctors,” says author Joanne Limburg.
“I was particularly intrigued and moved by the story of Queen Anne, who went through seventeen or eighteen pregnancies, but was to leave no heir. She suffered all manner of losses…miscarriages, stillbirths, neo-natal deaths, the deaths of two daughters in infancy and one son on his eleventh birthday. Years later, when I had myself suffered a miscarriage and given birth to a child, I was trying to write about those experiences, and Anne came into my head again.”
The court of King Charles II is a glittering rebirth of Restoration England. Princess Anne, niece of the king, is a ten-year old sickly girl. As she grows up she likes to gamble, gossip with her ladies of the bed chamber and eat unhealthy foods. As a pawn in her uncle’s plot to secure the crown of England, she seems unlikely to survive. At eighteen she marries Prince George of Denmark and becomes heir to the throne. She will face grief over her lost children, the political intrigues of her sister Mary and her betrayal.
“I felt drawn to Anne because of her experience of maternal loss,” says Limburg. “When you suffer a miscarriage, you realise how many women experience it, how much it hurts, and how little it is talked about. I wanted, through Anne’s story, to honour all those bereft women and all their lost children.”
Limburg did a great deal of research, reading biographies, histories of the time, and works on clothes and food. She had a small research grant from the Society of Authors that enabled her to visit Windsor Castle, Hampton Court and Kensington Palace, to see the locations where the many of the events in the book took place.
“While I was writing the book, I subscribed to a service called British History Online, where I could check the State records of the time,” says Limburg. “That supplied me with a wealth of fascinating detail that I was able to use in the book. It enabled me to check what was happening on a political level on any given day in Anne’s life. As a member of the royal family, Anne’s personal life was inextricably tied up with domestic and European politics.”
A thread that runs through the book is Anne’s passionate friendship with Sarah Churchill. “Sarah kept the letters Anne wrote to her,” says Limburg. “I was fortunate enough to be able to read them in the British Library. It was extraordinary to touch the paper Anne had touched, to read her writing and even to see those places where her tears had smudged the ink.”
Limburg has written three poetry collections: Femenismo, Paraphernalia and releasing next year, The Autistic Alice. She’s also written a children’s poetry collection, Bookside Down. She’s written two memoirs, The Woman Who Thought Too Much and Small Pieces: A Book of Lamentations, to release next summer.
Limburg won an Eric Gregory Award for poetry in 1998. Femenismo was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Paraphernalia was a Poetry Book Society Choice. The Woman Who Thought Too Much was on the shortlist for Mind Book of the Year. A Want of Kindness has yet to be optioned for film or television.
Greenberg says her role in getting this book published was presenting it to her publishers and then…waiting. “I apologised to her editor for saying that it was stunning,” says Limburg. “But, her editor replied that if I were saying that it was probably true…which it has been found to be.”
Limburg has recently finished a PhD and is looking forward to taking a break. She is based in
Cambridge, England. She was born in London.
A Want of Kindness, a novel by Joanne Limburg. Hardcover: 448 pages, Publisher: Pegasus Books; 1 edition (December 6, 2016). Language: English, ISBN-13: 978-1681772592 $25.95
