Exclusive interview with author Marian Veevers discussing her biography of Regency authors Jane Austen and Dorothy Wordsworth
By Gabrielle Pantera
“I find the late Georgian period, late 1700s, early 1800s, interesting because it was a time of great change,” says Jane and Dorothy, A True Tale of Sense and Sensibility author Marian Veevers. “It was a time of revolutions, but also, in Britain, a time of fierce conservatism as the ruling classes watched with alarm events in France and America.”
Jane Austen and Dorothy Wordsworth were born just four years apart in Georgian England. They were both writers and from the same class. Neither married. Both women were affected by the writing of poet William Wordsworth, Dorothy’s brother. While Jane strove to make a living from her writing, Dorothy lived with and cared for her brother. In exploring the lives of two female authors, Veevers covers women’s roles in Regency society and how family played a part in both women’s lives and writing.
Veevers inspiration came from her own life. Ten years ago she began working a few hours a week for the Wordsworth Trust as a guide in the Lake District at Dove Cottage at Grasmere, William and Dorothy’s home.
“At that time I had just begun writing my Dido Kent series of mystery novels, which is set in the world of Jane Austen and alludes to her work,” says Veevers. “So, on many days I would find myself inhabiting the world of Dorothy Wordsworth in the morning, then going home to write about a social setting which would have familiar to Jane Austen. I came to realise that these weren’t two separate worlds. I realised that their lives had become very different because they made different choices about how to deal with the problems that were common to women of their class and time.”
Austen and Wordsworth had very different personalities.
“Jane was very restrained, unwilling to share her feelings with anyone beyond a very small circle,” says Veevers. “She once wrote to her sister, ‘I cannot anyhow continue to find people agreeable’. Dorothy, on the other hand, was described by her friends as having a quality of wildness about her. She showed her feelings and believed that this was the right thing to do. “All is contemptible that does not spring immediately out of an affectionate heart,’ she maintained.”
In her research, Veevers looked beyond Austen’s and Wordworth’s letters, into the writings of their friends, family and other contemporaries. Many of Austen’s letters are of course lost, famously burned by her sister. Veevers also researched the British Navy, the French Revolution, the history of dissenters, and the East India Company. Veevers had free access to the largest collection of documents relating to the Wordsworth family, held by the Wordsworth Trust at Grasmere. Veevers was able to do detailed research at Chawton Cottage and Winchester archives through a grant by the Author’s Foundation.
Veevers has five published novels, four in her Dido Kent series published in the UK and in the US, under the pen name Anna Dean. The fifth is the novel Bloodlines, set around Shakespeare’s play Macbeth. Jane and Dorothy has yet to be optioned for film or TV. Veevers is currently experimenting with writing three different novels, before deciding which is the one to continue with. Veevers says she has so many stories she wants to tell.
Veevers lives in the Lake District, in a small village about five miles from Grasmere. She’s lived there with her husband for nearly 30 years, and for 20 of those years was the local postmaster. She was born in the Valley of Eskdale, about 15 miles away.
Veevers has two websites: www.marianveevers.co.uk and www.annadean.co.uk. She’s on Twitter and Facebook as Marian Veevers.
Jane and Dorothy: A True Tale of Sense and Sensibility: The Lives of Jane Austen and Dorothy Wordsworth by Marian Veevers. Hardcover: 336 pages. Publisher: Pegasus Books. 1st edition (April 3, 2018). Language: English, ISBN-13: 9781681776781 $27.95
