I am delighted to be on the first day of the blog tour to celebrate Allie Cresswell's Mrs Bates of Highbury. A prequel to Jane Austen's Emma, it is a Regency Romance, planned to be the first of three books in the series.
The new novel from Readers' Favourite silver medalist Allie
Cresswell.
Thirty years before the beginning of 'Emma' Mrs Bates is
entirely different from the elderly, silent figure familiar to fans of Jane
Austen’s fourth novel. She is comparatively young and beautiful, widowed - but
ready to love again. She is the lynch-pin of Highbury society until the
appalling Mrs Winwood arrives, very determined to hold sway over that ordered
little town.
Miss Bates is as talkative aged twenty nine as she is in her
later iteration, with a ghoulish fancy, seeing disaster in every cloud. When
young Mr Woodhouse arrives looking for a plot for his new house, the two strike
up a relationship characterised by their shared hypochondria, personal
chariness and horror of draughts.
Jane, the other Miss Bates, is just seventeen and eager to
leave the parochialism of Highbury behind her until handsome Lieutenant Weston
comes home on furlough from the militia and sweeps her - quite literally - off
her feet.
Mrs Bates of Highbury is the first of three novels by the
Amazon #1 best-selling Allie Cresswell, which trace the pre-history of Emma and
then run in parallel to it.
My Thoughts
When I read the premise to this book- that it was intended as a prequel to Emma, I just had to read it. I found for the first half of the novel, that I could not get the character of Emma herself out of my mind and I felt as if I was looking for her around every corner. It was halfway through that I realised that I had stopped doing that and was really enjoying the story and the characters for their own sake.
It is very clever how many of the themes of Jane Austen's world can be found in Mrs Bates of Highbury. Marriage is a major preoccupation just as it is in Emma, as it offers security and respectability to the young women of the village. There are various models of marriage on show. You can glimpse a devoted couple in Mrs Bates' recollections of her deceased husband. Highbury teems with others though- shy courtships, ruined reputations, marriage for security, marriage through social expectation, ill- matched couples- the list goes on. I loved the gossip and the shrewd observations of human behaviour. There is humour in the vanity and self- importance of the new incumbents of the Vicarage and their soiree proves to be comedy gold.
With plenty of misunderstandings and misinterpretations, I was engaged in the story to the end and look forward to the next instalment as we edge nearer to the time of Emma herself.
In short: A Regency romance with some great characterisation.
About the Author
Allie Cresswell was born in Stockport, UK and began writing
fiction as soon as she could hold a pencil.
She did a BA in English Literature at Birmingham University
and an MA at Queen Mary College, London.
She has been a print-buyer, a pub landlady, a book-keeper,
run a B & B and a group of boutique holiday cottages. Nowadays Allie writes
full time having retired from teaching literature to lifelong learners.
She has two grown-up children, two granddaughters and two
grandsons, is married to Tim and lives in Cumbria, NW England.
For the duration of the blog tour, Allie Cresswell has five
hard copies of Game Show and five hard copies of Tiger in a Cage, all signed,
available for £5 plus p & p to UK addresses. If you are interested then
please get in touch with Allie.
for a copy of the book and a place on the tour.
Do follow the rest of the tour!
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