My dissertation focused on the writings of Mary Elizabeth Braddon and Wilkie Collins.Īfter leaving the academic world, in 2013, I started keeping a blog dedicated to nineteenth-century literature and culture-the Secret Victorianist. I went on to study for a BA in Classics & English at the University of Oxford, followed by a Master’s there in English Literature, 1800-1914. I grew up reading Victorian novels, especially the works of Charles Dickens, the Brontes, Thomas Hardy, and George Eliot. And of course, after the sale, I went through rounds of edits with my publisher too!Īll in, it was just under four years from my “aha” moment, when I got the idea for Bronte’s Mistress, til the day I saw it on store bookshelves. We were on submission for five days with publishers before I accepted a preempt offer from Daniella Wexler at Atria Books. Danielle and I worked through two rounds of edits, which took around five months. I started querying literary agents the next month, and after two months in the query trenches, signed with my wonderful agent, Danielle Egan-Miller. I then interviewed them and worked for a month making changes based on their insights. I made edits for two months based on my research trip findings before sending my novel to ten beta readers (I’d already had chapter-by-chapter feedback from two writing groups too). I then went on a research trip to Yorkshire to augment my desk research, including spending time in the Bronte Parsonage Museum archives. So I did a full year of research before starting to write the novel that would become Bronte’s Mistress.įollowing on from this, I drafted the novel in under six months, including revising as I worked. The Brontes are incredibly famous and we know a lot about their lives. How long did it take for you to write the book? Did you do have to do any research? And I worked on the project obsessively, convinced that if I didn’t tell Lydia’s story, somebody else would. I knew this was a book I just had to write. Somebody, I thought, must have told Lydia’s side of the story, through a twenty-first century feminist lens. I was fascinated by this salacious piece of gossip from literary history and shocked at the gender double standard in Gaskell’s judgment of Lydia. Gaskell described Lydia as “wretched” and “profligate,” and accused her of tempting Branwell into the “deep disgrace of a deadly crime.” In this case, she told readers, “the man became the victim.” I was reading Elizabeth Gaskell’s biography of Charlotte Bronte (the first Bronte biography) when I came across her description of Lydia Robinson, the older woman rumored to have had an affair with Branwell Bronte.

What sparked the idea for Bronte’s Mistress ? Robinson-the older woman rumored to have had an affair with Branwell Bronte, leading to the downfall of the entire Bronte family.

Brontë’s Mistress by Finola Austin