Word Wenches
September 27, 2010 by ciji · Leave a Comment
Last week, a great writer pal of mine, Mary Jo Putney, seen here at left, asked if I would “guest blog” on a great site for historical and romance novel buffs: Word Wenches. MJ and some other terrific scribes like Jo Beverly and Patricia Rice have been posting their musings, thoughts, notions, and passionate opinions about their work and the writer’s craft for a couple of years, now, and are considered among the best practitioners of the blogging craft on the Web.
I had a great time and after my stint, was granted an “HWW:” an Honorary Word Wench award, which to my mind is to be highly prized…
MJ and I decided I was vastly qualified to do a riff on a subject close to my heart: how much covers can make or break a book, a situation that is particularly true when it comes to historical versus romance fiction.
As I said in the Word Wench piece (and elaborated here on a blog post of my own entitled A Tale of Two Covers regarding my forth-coming Wicked Company), what I find so fascinating is the way books are truly categorized by their covers. Readers obviously take their cues from the images depicted on the front of a book. Here are two radically different approaches to editions of the first novel I ever wrote, Island of the Swans.
The new Sourcebooks Landmark trade paperback cover on the left incorporates the actual 18th c. portrait of the heroine, Jane Maxwell, 4th Duchess of Gordon by George Romney, hanging now in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. 
The Bantam mass market paperback cover on the right used modern models and classic poses used to promote romance fiction.
Romance readers know what they like and expect, and the same holds true for lovers of historical novels. If the covers don’t match the content, readers can, rightly, become highly incensed—and I don’t blame them. As with Island of the Swans and Wicked Company, my other novels always include a love story, but each one also centers on the question “What were the women doing in history?” To answer that query, the books by necessity must be extensively researched as to the role of a very small segment of the population–women who earned their own keep in a day far removed from our own.
The idea that a few, talented and brave females longed for self-expression in various fields that were then the exclusive provenance of men is also central to the dual story historical/contemporary titles I’ve written: A Cottage by the Sea, Midnight on Julia Street, and A Light on the Veranda.
From the earliest days of my career when I held at Readership in British-American History at the hallowed Huntington Library in San Marino, California, I’ve been fascinated by “professional women” in the 18th and 19th centuries and have chosen to tell the stories of female politicians, artists, writers, and musicians—all based on composites of women who really lived and plied their various crafts for money.
The problem was, the books I wrote in the 1980’s and 90’s as full-on historical novels about these “famous-but-forgotten” women of history were often saddled with some God-awful covers during the period when nearly every historical was thought to have a better chance in the marketplace if it emphasized the romance more than the history.
But bless Sourcebooks/Landmark for creating a “look” this time around that matches the contents of my historicals, so that hardcore romance readers can steer clear of them if they so chose, and lovers of historical fiction (who don’t object to a love story threaded through the narrative) might give them a try!
May all the readers of both the Word Wenches blog and my own blog feel so inclined October 1, when the new cover of Wicked Company–originally given an equally misleading earlier incarnation–hits the stands this time around looking like this…
.
…instead of this….
Outfoxing “That Little Toad!” Edward Capell, Censor
September 5, 2010 by ciji · Leave a Comment
There is nothing more delicious for an historical novelist than to run across a generally unknown figure in history who is a person to be thoroughly disliked, as with Edward Capell, an 18th c. play censor in the Crown of England’s Lord Chamberlain’s office.
From all accounts, he had a very high opinion of his own intellect–perhaps deservedly so, as he was considered an expert on the works of Shakespeare and was often asked to authenticate various manuscripts. However, he held the lowest opinion imaginable of a mere woman attempting to earn her living by her pen. Thus, any woman playwright trying to get one of her works past this disapproving bureaucrat and granted a license to be performed on a professional stage in London or elsewhere in the Kingdom faced frustration bordering on the urge-to-kill.
Edward Capell could end any writer’s career with a stroke of his pen, but he apparently took special delight in blindsiding “uppity women,” including a number of woman writers who ultimately took refuge in using male pseudonyms to try to get past his overt prejudice against them.
The “cameo” image on the left is highly flattering, for in life, he was an odd little man, with a penchant of eating foods only the color white! He’d eat mashed potatoes or parsnips, but never orange carrots. He’d consume white cheese, but never cheddar; white wine, but not claret. Such was his odd phobia of foods of vibrant hues, that the lack of vitamins in his diet soon produced scrufulous skin disorders, making his appearance behind his desk at the Lord Chamberlain’s office quite a terrifying sight to behold.
Fortunately, there were a number of clever women writers who managed to get their works approved for production by one means or another, including Frances Sheridan, mother of the far more famous playwright, Richard Sheridan of The Rivals and The School for Scandal fame. Frances, seen here on your right, had a dreadful time running the gauntlet of the Lord Chamberlain’s office, though she managed to see her The Discovery and The Dupe produced under her own name at Drury Lane by David Garrick, the immortal actor and manager there whose fame continues to this day.
Garrick, as you will discover if you read my forth-coming Wicked Company was the best friend an 18th c. woman playwright would ever find, and chroncling his brilliant handling of the dreaded censor, Edward Capell, was one of the most delightful experiences I ever enjoyed as an historical novelist.
When my heroine, Sophie McGann, comes storming into his office shouting, “Oh, how I despise that little toad!” having just learned that Capell has refused her latest play a license, Garrick kindly pats her on the arm and replies, “Well, my dear, we must then simply out fox him. Now, here’s my idea…”
Wicked Company‘s publication date is October 1 and, hopefully, will be in the books stores a bit before that. I hope you’ll love to “despise that little toad” Edward Capell as much as I did!
A “Petticoat Playwright” Wannabe
August 29, 2010 by ciji · Leave a Comment
In the late 1980’s, just about the time I had finished researching and writing my first historical novel, Island of the Swans, I stumbled across a reference to a minor character I’d included in the book , the sister of the heroine, Jane Maxwell, 4th Duchess of Gordon (1749-1812). I discovered that the duchess’s younger sibling, Eglantine, Lady Wallace, not only enjoyed playing the harp for guests in her home, as you see here, but also penned three plays.
One, The Ton: or, Follies of Fashion was produced in 1788 to a distinct lack of success at London’s Covent Garden theater; the second, The Whim, was forbidden a license by the official censor in the Lord Chamberlain’s office; and the third, an adaptation from a French play, Diamond Cut Diamond, suffered a fate that has been lost in the mists of time. Frankly, I was amazed to have learned that women were writing plays for London’s finest theaters during the 18th c.–many under their own names, as was the case with Lady Wallace for The Ton.
I remember walking into the Rare Book room at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, where I held a Readership in 18th & 19th c. British-American History, and putting in three call slips, certain these obscure manuscripts were only to be found in a dusty corner of some library in London. (No books circulate outside these types of research libraries, so you can see how many tomes began to pile up on my desk as time went on with this project!)
Much to my shock, the Huntington had all three plays! Not only that, they had scores more dramas and comedies written by eighteenth century women playwrights because more than seventy years before, Henry Huntington’s acquiring agents bought the Larpent Collection of plays from the heirs of a long-dead censor in the Lord Chamberlain’s office, the bureaucracy that, up until the early 1960’s, determined which plays could be presented in Britain.
In fact, in the course of researching and writing Wicked Company, I learned that there were a hundred women playwrights in Britain and America who saw their works produced on professional stages between 1660 and 1820. While in London, I had the pleasure of back stage tours of the latest “editions” of Covent Garden and Drury Lane theaters (both places have burned to the ground several times due to the candles used to light the proceedings prior to the invention of electricity).
That moment when I held a copy of Eglantine, Lady Wallace’s failed play in my hand marked the start of a three-year odyssey to discover professional women playwrights whose works were produced to great success–unlike poor Eglantine–at the theatres royal, Covent Garden and Drury Lane, an image of the latter you see here.
Finding the failed plays of this “petticoat” playwright wannabe also provided the avenue that eventually led me to Edward Capell, a strange little functionary who had the absolute power to end the writing careers of these professional women playwrights with the stroke of his pen. Capell was destined to become one of the most intriguing “villains” I’ve ever had the pleasure to create!
But more about this mean, spiteful little toad next time…and I’ll even post an image of what he looked like…
Wicked Company, by the way, will be in bookstores in October, courtesy of Sourcebooks Landmark, and I can’t wait!
A Shakespeare Festival in 1769
August 22, 2010 by ciji · Leave a Comment
The three actors on your left are performing this summer in New York Classical Theater‘s production of Much Ado About Nothing presented in Central Park. (The handsome gent in the middle is my brother-in-law, Christopher Cass, playing Don Pedro, Prince of Aragon as a Naval officer!)
Shakespeare festivals have been going on so long, their organizers are constantly searching for new interpretations–and certainly new “settings” for some very old plays. This Much Ado is set in 1945 during World War II. (Well, why not?)
It got me thinking as I am readying a new edition of my historical novel, Wicked Company for publication in October of this year from Sourcebooks Landmark. My book centers on the life of the women playwrights whose works were produced to great success at London’s Covent Garden and Drury Lane theaters in the last half of the 18thc.
David Garrick, the actor-manager of Drury Lane, was not only credited with mentoring women playwrights, but also with being the finest Shakespearean actor of his day. As one wag put it, “Garrick elevated the Bard from able dramatist to a God.”
Recently I was proofing the section dealing with the heroine Sophie McGann’s role assisting at Garrick’s famous (some say infamous) Shakespeare Jubilee held on the banks and in the village of Stratford-Upon-Avon in September of 1769. Sadly, the skies opened up and it virtually poured buckets of rain during the entire three-day event, nearly drowning the actors and audiences alike.
Garrick had summoned the finest thespians of the day to join him in the tribute held in Shakespeare’s birthplace, and redeemed the soggy disaster by presenting his “Ode to Shakespeare” –a performance that eyewitnesses said brought down the house (a rotunda, actually) as the water was rising and soaking the slippers of the entire audience. The scholars and intellectuals of the day, including Garrick’s supposed friend, Samuel Johnson, boycotted the event.
On the left is a highly idealized image of Garrick reciting his Ode. Ever the entrepreneur, he re-staged the washed-out “Parade of Shakespeare Characters” back in London, and whenever the billboards trumpeted the most famous actor of his day was–again–to deliver his Ode to Shakespeare, the house was packed.
Last week, my poor brother-in-law performing Shakespeare outdoors had a similar experience to Garrick ‘s and his actors in 1769. Chris’s Sunday, August 15th performance of Much Ado on the grass in Central Park was just that: nothing. It was rained out!
So what’s new?
18th c. Actor-Manager David Garrick–A Feminist?
August 15, 2010 by ciji · Leave a Comment
One of the great delights in researching my up-coming October release of Wicked Company from Sourcebooks Landmark was discovering that David Garrick, the fabled actor-manager of the eighteenth century London Theater Royal, Drury Lane, was what we surely would call in our own age, “a feminist.”
For the nearly thirty years of his sterling career, he championed women artists–not only actresses, but dancers, novelists and playwrights as well. Here on the left in a portrait by Hogarth, he is shown at his desk, no doubt penning one of his own plays which competed with the immortal likes of She Stoops to Conquer and The School for Scandal.
Garrick was also known for another oddity of his age and ours: an absolute devotion to his wife, Eva-Maria, pictured behind him as a kind of bright yellow “happy muse.”
In the eighteenth century, with no television or motion pictures to steal his audiences–Garrick changed the playbill every few days or so. He also offered dancing, singing, and other divertissments in a bold attempt to keep his fickle patrons from heading over to his nearby arch rival, Theater Royal, Covent Garden.
This constant revolving of “What’s on tonight at Drury Lane?” required, however, a never-ending need for new material.
With great respect for the professional life his wife had enjoyed as a premier dancer of her day, Garrick was only too happy to hire talent, whatever its gender, to keep the public’s interest in the kinds of entertainment offered at Drury Lane, and in fact, he encouraged women writers by offering them his services as mentor and editor as they toiled on their plays.
Garrick launched a number of women in well-paid careers as “petticoat playwrights,” among them the actress, comedienne Kitty Clive (1711-1785), seen here on the right. He also served as cheerleader to one of the playwriting “Hannahs”–Hannah More . (The other, Hannah Cowley ,and Hannah More actually despised each other–but you will have to read Wicked Company to learn more about that!).
When I was first researching this historical novel at the Huntington Library and Art Galleries in the late 1980’s–as seen here on the left–there was very little published about Garrick’s role in launching these women into professional writing careers. But soon I was bumping into theater scholars from Ohio, Delaware, and Yale universities and elsewhere, hard at work on such nonfiction efforts as Curtain Call: British and American Women and the Theater 1660-1820, and The Plays of Frances Sheridan (mother of Richard, of The School for Scandal and The Rivals fame). Garrick produced one of Frances Sheridan’s work, The Dupe, though, sadly, it found little favor with the sometimes riotous, badly-behaved audiences.
David Garrick died in 1779, and much later, a London social club was named in his honor. When I was in London researching Wicked Company, I was taken there as a guest on the only day a woman could enter those portals because–of course, The Garrick Club was founded by men, and as far as can be determined, remains for men only.
Ah, the ironies of history…
