Literary Pilgrimage to England

This is an excerpt from my eBook entitled "England in the Footsteps of its Literary Giants".   I wrote this in 1987 after I'd received my Bachelors Degree in English Literature.  My husband & I took a 3 week trip to see the birthplaces and environs of some of my favorite British writers.  

Our next stop was the Yorkshire Dales, where James Herriot lived and wrote of his experiences as a veterinarian in “All Creatures Great and Small”.  We knew that the name “James Herriot” was his “nom de plume” and we wouldn’t be able to look up that name in the local phone book, but we wanted to make a pilgrimage to Thirsk, the town where we’d heard that he lived and practiced.  We went into a bookstore in the town’s square, and, being the intrepid travelers, asked the clerk if he knew where the famous writer lived or worked.  He told us that all we had to do was to walk across the street and look for the red door and the sign, “Veterinary Surgeon’s Premises”.  Outside was a white drop off box where Herriot often left medication for his clients to pick up after hours.  He was still practicing medicine at the time when we were there, but, unfortunately, we never got to meet him.  He has passed away since our visit and his home/office is now a museum in his honor.

Home/Office of James Herriot

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The Yorkshire Dales really were beautiful: rolling green hills with hedgerows discretely separating each farm.  Another reason why we had come to this area was to visit the home of the Brontes.  We saw the Parsonage where the family resided and were able to see the desks where the sisters had done their writing. We walked the moors and thought of Heathcliffe and Kathy from “Wuthering Heights”.  It was cold there and we stopped for some tea in a little shoppe.

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The Bronte Parsonage

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The Brontes weren’t the only 19^th century female writers whose house we visited--we also made a pilgrimage to two of Jane Austen’s houses.  The first was in Chawton, which is about 60 miles from London. Walking the neighborhood, I was struck by the vision of thatch-roofed cottages and I saw an old, creepy cemetery attached to an ancient-looking church. The town looked like it hadn’t changed much since Jane Austen’s time.

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Her last home was across the street from the Winchester Cathedral.  She died here just when she was starting to get famous.  She is buried beneath the floors of the cathedral. I again thought of music from the 1960’s and the popular song that said, “Winchester Cathedral—you’re bringing me down”.  I seemed to have had a 1960’s song track playing in my head on this vacation.  Not only did I think of music on this trip: almost every place we visited also spoke of England’s literary heritage.  We strolled through the town of Winchester, and we saw a parade of “19^th Century British soldiers” marching through the Victorian-looking town.  We found out that the mini-series, “Vanity Faire”, by William Makepeace Thackeray (another of my favorite Victorian writers), was being filmed.

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“Are you going to Scarborough Faire”? asks the song from Simon and Garfunkel—another of my favorites from the 1960’s.  The town of Scarborough, northeast of York, sits on a bluff overlooking the coast.  It is famous for the awe-inspiring remains of a castle and a church.  The ruins were partially destroyed in 1645 during the Civil War between Cromwell and Charles I.  When we were there, the wind from the coast was eerily whipping through the ruins.  It was a very beautiful location and definitely “worth a detour” as guide book say.

Scarborough Ruins

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When the time had come to return to our lives in California, we didn’t want to leave. England has so much more to see.  California is so young compared to “jolly olde England”, with all its history and culture.  The trip was a splurge—we were lucky that our bosses allowed us to take three weeks off for our vacation.  Before we had left California for our pilgrimage to literary England, I had been saving up money from my paychecks all year.  We wouldn’t have changed a thing.  It was the trip of a lifetime and a dream come true for this English Major.

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Jane Austen

The Forgotten Sister: A Sequel to Pride and Prejudice

by Louise Hathaway

Only $1.99

Here's some good news for Jane Austen fans: "The Forgotten Sister: A Sequel to Pride and Prejudice" is now available at the lowered price of $1.99. It's about Mary Bennet, the plain middle daughter in Pride and Prejudice, as she compares herself to her beautiful sisters, tries to get her father to notice her, complains about her mother’s melodramatics, falls in love, considers a move to America, becomes a writer, and a ultimately becomes a champion of those less fortunate. What makes this book different from other books written about Pride and Prejudice is its depiction of the social history in Britain during the nineteenth century. Mary Bennet learns about the worlds of their servants in Pemberley, poor chimney sweeps, and factory workers. Transport yourself back to the Regency era and get better aquainted with one of period's famous fictional families.

Available at Amazon, iTunes, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Google Play, Scribd, and Smashwords.  Here are the book's direct links at each store:

Purchase at Amazon
Purchase at iTunes
Purchase at Barnes & Noble
Purchase at Google Play
Purchase at Kobo
Purchase at Smashwords

Jane Austen

Do you like Jane Austen? Do you wish you'd lived in the Regency era? Can't get enough of Mr. Darcy? If so, perhaps you'll like my books:

The Forgotten Sister: A Sequel to Pride and Prejudice:

http://www.amazon.com/Forgotten-Sister-Sequel-…/…/B00S04BKX4

Marriage in Pride and Prejudice (this is a literary essay I wrote in Graduate School):
http://www.amazon.com/Marriage-Pride-Prejudice…/…/B00PYYS8U6

Nonsense and Sensibility: A Modern Austen Variation:

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/nonsense-and-sensibility-louise-hathaway/1122360779

Also available at iTunes, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Kobo, Smashwords and Oyster

What is your favorite Jane Austen novel?

I had never read Jane Austen until the semester before I received my Master's Degree in English. Isn't that odd?  What took so long?  I think Jane was a bit looked down upon in the "serious" literature department: I remember how my classmates dismissed Pride and Prejudice as "a story about a bunch of girls wanting to get married."  That's what they said to me when I announced that I wanted to write my research paper on it.

Needless to say, I loved Jane from the very first page of Pride and Prejudice.  I'm from a family of a lot of girls, so the characters and their concerns seem very real to me.  Add to that attraction, I loved everything British:"Masterpiece Theatre," The Rollings Stones, Twiggy, Yardley lipstick--I could go on and on.

Looking back, from where I am in my life right now, I would choose "Sense and Sensibility" as my favorite Jane Austen novel.  To me, it echoed my relationship with my sisters; especially between my younger sister and myself.  She and I would often say about the novel that she was the "Sense" to my "Sensibility": she was the one who went for the bad boys; for the roller coaster ride; while I played it safe in my world of prudence and sensibility.

My younger sister died six years ago.  I often think about Jane Austen's novel as it pertains to her: I remember discussing it with my sister and saying that the scene in the novel where Marianne almost dies is how I would feel towards her if anything ever happened to her.

Unfortunately, my fears came true when my sister, like Marianne in the novel, had a life-threatening illness.  Marianne survived; but my sister did not.  I loved her with my heart and soul and I dedicate my book to her:

Nonsense and Sensibility: 

A Modern Austen Variation

By Louise Hathaway

Available for $1.99 at iTunes, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Kobo Books, Smashword, and Oyster.

Jane Austen and Sense and Sensibility

30% Off.  Only $1.99

Nonsense and Sensibility:

A Modern Austen Variation

by: Louise Hathaway

$1.99 at Barnes and Noble, iTunes, Google Play, Kobo and Smashwords

This romantic comedy is a modern version of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility. It’s the story of two American sisters and the men who love them. Elinor, the older of the two, is the sensible one who is prudent and dependable. In contrast, Marianne is the passionate one guided by her emotions who tends to get carried away, especially when it comes to love. Will she choose bad boy Willoughby who comes to her rescue on his mighty steed, or Colonel Brandon, an older man who could offer her a lifetime of safe and dependable love? Will Elinor and her true love, Edward, ever be free to marry? Will Lucy ever let him go? Find out in this story, told with deep and abiding love for the inimitable Jane Austen.

Pride and Prejudice

This eBook is a scholarly essay about marriage expectations in the Regency period as expressed in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.  It explores the different relationships between the sexes in the novel, and what the options were for women who were not yet married during this period. Accompanied by photographs taken by the author when she made a Jane Austen pilgrimage to Winchester and Chawton, England, this is a must read for all the “Janites” out there.

How can anyone not love Jane Austen?  I found out that she was looked down upon by “serious students of English Literature” when I was in graduate school and I announced to my class in Romantic Literature that I had chosen to write about Pride and Prejudice.  My fellow classmates dismissed the book, saying that it was just about "some silly girls wanting to get married."  I couldn’t help but be reminded of a letter that Jane Austen wrote to her sister, saying, “I must confess that I think [Elizabeth Bennet, the main character in the novel] as delightful a character as ever appeared in print, and how I shall be able to tolerate those who do not like her …I do not know.”  I hope this essay will help the skeptics take another look at her novel and reconsider.

Marriage in Pride and Prejudice

By Louise Hathaway

eBook available for 99 cents at the following online bookstores:

Amazon Apple B & N Smashwords


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The Importance of Setting in "The Tustin Chronicles: A Detective Santy Mystery"

The best English teacher I ever had used to tell us that what we learned in class is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to understanding literature.  He'd remind us, "This book was not written in a vacuum: what was going on in the time the novel or poem was written?  What about the setting in which the action takes place?  Why did the author chose that locale to tell his story?  How about the author's life?  Did that affect the way he wrote the novel?  Most of the time I felt that I could never do enough to please him; he was always challenging us to do more and that's why his students either loved him or hated him.

His name was Alan Gauley and he taught at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa, California.  He also inspired T. Jefferson Parker, a classmate of ours in high school, who wrote books about Orange County, such as Laguna Heat or Little Saigon.  I wanted to write a book about my hometown of Tustin that takes place between 1970's to the 1990's.  Mine was a town where the Catholic Church used to hold Mass in a Sunquist packing house, with birds flying among the rafters, before the parish finally got enough money to build a "real church".  It was also a place of hippies and headshops and a nearby restaurant at South Coast Plaza that looked like the waiting room of the 20th Century Limited, complete with a steam train and an announcer intermittently proclaiming "All Aboard!"

My husband and I wrote this murder mystery about our home town.  We'd like to think that Tustin is one of the main characters in our story, The Tustin Chronicles: A Detective Santy Mystery. We live in a city where everyone across the United States, especially in the winter time, dreams of moving to; it's a place where the sun is always shining.  Our town has undergone tremendous growth in the last few decades as orange groves are plowed under to make way for housing tracks and mini-markets. We'd like to think that the theme of the book, a daughter's attempt to find the truth behind her father's murder, could only have taken place here in all the local places with all the interesting real life people that we feel are integral to telling this story.  Hopefully, while reading it, you can almost close your eyes and see it.

 
eBook available for $2.99 at all your favorite online bookstores
Paperback available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble

Nancy Drew Meets James Bond

I've been busy writing my next Nancy Keene book, "The Case of the Stolen Mask".  This book, a humorous, PG-Rated tale written for nostalgic women baby-boomers like myself who grew up loving Nancy Drew mysteries, has my teenage sleuth going to London and staying in the same hotel as Daniel Craig (AKA James Bond) when his BAFTA award is stolen from his room.  When Nancy is not on a Jane Austen pilgrimage or visiting Buckingham Palace, she channels Agatha Christie, Sherlock Holmes, and Rumpole of the Bailey to help her solve the mystery.

Check out my other Nancy Keene Mysteries at all your favorite online bookstores:

The Missing Bachelor Farmer

The Ghost in the Plantation

The Buried Treasure on Route 66