Star interview: How Gill Hornby brings Jane Austen ’ s world to life

A U S T E N T R A N S L A T I O N

Jane Austen ’ s world comes to life in the novels of , as discovers

What do readers love about Jane Austen ’ s books, 200 years after she wrote them? Wit, warmth, a wry and amused insight into the vagaries of the human condition? Those are also the qualities to be found in Gill Hornby ’ s sparkling new novel Godmersham Park, which plays with the conventions of the Regency novel as it follows the fortunes of Anne Sharp, a real-life associate of Jane Austen.

Combining intelligence and entertainment in equal measure, Godmersham Park is a real treat. So is its author, who could probably charm the pants off wheely bins, and appears on Zoom cutting a tremendous dash in a fabulous bright orange dress and an insouciant

Lauren Bacall-esque glamour.

Godmersham Park is Gill’ s fourth novel. Her first, 2013’ s bestselling

The Hive, was one of those watercooler books that got talked about – a delicious contemporary social comedy about yummy mummies that skewered cliquey playground dynamics with humour and insight. Following that she wrote another modern comedy of manners, 2015’ s All Together Now. 2020’ s Miss Austen, though, was Gill’ s first historical novel – and a real breakthrough. Fictionalising the story of why Jane Austen ’ s sister Cassandra burned Jane ’ s letters, it was a bestseller and made its way onto ‘best book of 2020’ lists. Godmersham Park, Gill’ s second Austen-related title, turns to another minor player in the Austen canon: Jane ’ s friend Anne Sharp. Gill had been intrigued by her for some time.

‘In all of my research about the Austens, I came across Anne Sharp a lot, ’ says Gill. ‘She ’ s one of the few people whose letters to Jane survived. And she kept them. She knew enough about Jane ’ s genius and posterity to keep them. So I read those. And my basic policy was that Jane was an extremely shrewd judge of character. She took care to keep in touch with Anne for all of her life and she was the last person Jane wrote to just before

she died – so it shows the value of the friendships. ’

The real-life Anne ’ s story is shrouded in mystery until she makes an appearance as a governess at Godmersham Park, which was the home of Jane Austen ’ s brother Edward Knight.

‘You know nothing about Anne before she turned up at Godmersham, ’ says Gill. ‘We can work out when she was born. Whilst she was there, the framework of the book is that two weeks before Anne arrived her charge Fanny Austen Knight was given a pocketbook and started to keep a diary and she kept it all her life. And there they are. Fanny kept them all those years, and it was very banal – today the canary laid an egg – but that was the stuff out of which I could build a novel. ’

Apart from Fanny ’ s diaries and the letters between Anne and Jane, the other real-life evidence Gill based her story around came from Anne ’ s later life.

‘She and Cassandra continued to write after Jane ’ s death, ’ says Gill. ‘And there ’ s her obituary, because she made it to running her own school. And the will. People write diaries and letters thinking they might be read, or found. But wills are honest. Anne ’ s will I found fascinating. She turned up at Godmersham in such desperate straits that she had to earn her own living. And when she died she left £2,000 and had 47 dear friends. I was so thrilled when I read that, it spoke of success, really. ’

From these snippets of truth, Gill has woven a clever, involving story about the life of a person who occupied a position in Regency society that was neither upstairs nor downstairs.

‘Governesses were a big part of the household, ’ says Gill. ‘It ’ s a big deal having someone live with you and it was so awkward because you were on the mezzanine level between staff and servants. The staff didn ’ t like you because you had airs and graces and the family would blow hot and cold. ’

Governesses appear in many 19th century novels, including Miss Taylor in Jane Austen ’ s Emma.

‘I think they turn up in fiction by women writers because they ’ re all extremely conscious of this fate, ’ says Gill. ‘In men ’ s fiction they ’ re slightly more invisible. The Brontës, Anne and Charlotte, were governesses – they ’ re women in the home but outside the home. It ’ s like Downton – a big house story, below stairs and upstairs. It was extraordinary because for women you couldn ’ t go out, you were all living cheek by jowl. People knew when

you had your periods or when your husband visited in the night. So these were often claustrophobic, oppressive relationships. ’

People became governesses, says Gill, because as women their employment options were limited. ‘There were only two ways of earning a living –teaching or going on the game really. Being a governess was open to genteel ladies, often because men had let them down. The worst thing of all was being companion to an elderly lady. So it really fascinates me how women got through, how they survived. ’

Single or married, Georgian women ’ s lives were circumscribed and difficult. ‘Single Georgian women just fascinate me, ’ says Gill. ‘You married for security. But there were so many reasons not to get married. The men died in the war, they were flawed, they married for money. And then there was the problem of childbirth – you were in for twenty pregnancies and extremely likely not to survive. So there were good reasons not to get married – but not marrying was a very awkward business. ’

With the bare bones of the known biographical facts about Anne, Gill began to construct her story.

‘I thought, well I’ll start at the beginning. It was incredibly restrictive because if I’d just had the dates I could’ ve had a high old time with all

sorts going on but I kept stubbing my toe on what was in the public domain. So Miss Sharp found her thimble and I had to think what happened. ’

She does not take her characters beyond the boundaries of what might have been realistic for them, for instance in terms of Anne and romance. ‘I go down it three quarters of the way. It would have been incredibly unfair on them to have done more. When I create monsters out of real people in the Austen world, I’ ve got evidence. I haven ’ t just created them out of nothing. ’

An episode in Godmersham Park shows what life might have been like for Anne on holiday with Jane and her sisters in a ‘ spinster cluster ’ .

‘That was the paradise that Jane found for herself, ’ says Gill. ‘And everyone has always felt sorry for them but I think they had a hoot. Jane,

“She was very jealous of Walter Scott because he was selling gazillions, but who reads Walter Scott now? Nobody! She gets a lot of criticism for not mentioning the war and poverty and endurance – but if she ’d banged on about that, we wouldn ’t be reading her now. She wrote about what it was like to have a mother, or brothers, or a dad or a boyfriend. ”

Cassandra, Martha, they didn ’ t have to worry about any man. And when Jane came into the blessed position of earning money, she didn ’ t have to hand it over to a man. ’

In Gill’ s hands, the relationship between Jane and Anne is a friendship between two creative women. ‘Anne was sent to Worthing to stay with the Austen ladies for at least a month, and we know Jane was revising a book, and it gave me this license to write about how they talk writer to writer. They called themselves writers even though the world didn ’ t see them as that. ’

Godmersham Park came about because of Miss Austen, and Miss Austen came after Gill wrote a book about Jane Austen for young readers. ‘Twenty years ago I was commissioned to write a biography of Jane Austen for 8- to 12-year-olds, ’ she says. ‘The thing about writing a short book is you have to know as much as if you ’ re writing a long book and that was because when I became obsessed with Cassandra. She was slightly haunting me already and when I read the letters, written with such love and how much J valued her, and then read the family letters that said she was a dry old stick, I was furious. Cassandra did all the work, she was the guardian aunt, and the attitude of the family ’ s views was completely tempered because Jane had become famous. All the time Cassandra was the top daughter, the eldest daughter, attractive, highly competent. Jane was amusing and wrote these stories but she was much more problematic. I wanted to write a manifesto for the defence of Cassandra really. And biographers hate her because she destroyed the letters, and I wanted to make a case for that. ’

Gill has been an Austen fan since her teenage years. I always read ferociously, read and I played the piano, but I was an incredibly difficult little bugger till I was sixteen, and not considered much of value. And then this English teacher saw something in me and utterly turned me around. She was an Austen addict and made me read all of them. But I didn ’ t engage in her life until I was commissioned to write the short book. So it ’ s all down to that teacher. That ’ s a reason Anne Sharp was so attractive to me, because I’ m really soppy about teachers, the amazing ones. When you do get those moments, to find something in someone and draw it out.

I wish I had done it, really. ’

Gill thinks readers are still entranced by Jane Austen ’ s novels, and fascinated by the author, because they ’ re about such relatable characters. ‘Her novels are incredibly popular because we can relate to them. She was very jealous of Walter Scott because he was selling gazillions, but who reads Walter Scott now? Nobody! She gets a lot of criticism for not mentioning the war and poverty and endurance – but if she ’d banged on about that, we wouldn ’ t be reading her now. She wrote about what it was like to have a mother, or brothers, or a dad or a boyfriend. And the world has changed but these facts are the same. She had the humour in the small things and the interactions –it ’ s all there. ’

Gill has drawn her historical characters as hugely relatable characters, making it easy for modern readers to empathise with them. ‘I make it relatable to now by giving them an internal life, ’ she says. ‘Contrasting the internal life with what people ’ s circumstances were like. Anne, invisible in her attic. The contrast between internal and external is there all the time. I just put myself in her shoes. ’

She ’ s very much enjoying the current fascination with all things Regency. ‘Bridgerton was thoroughly entertaining. I’ m delighted that people are lapping it all up. And there ’ s Emma – it ’ s Emma for a modern age. And the new Persuasion. You think Jane would be loving it. ’ Gill doesn ’ t think it ’ s a surprise that the Regency period continues to exert an appeal in modern times. ‘The Regency period was the absolute Renaissance, explosion of aesthetics, in Britain, ’ she says. ‘So it ’ s aesthetically pleasing. There was a bustle of intelligence and philosophy, blue stockings, the French Revolution, all affecting people intellectually in Britain. We were taking a lot of French migrants so that elevated the conversation. It was really tough if you were poor or a woman but bloody nice if you were a gentleman. There was this emphasis on the picturesque, on the seaside, they had holidays. That contributed to jollity. Jane had a much more liberal upbringing then she would’ ve had as a Victorian. Her father was a theologian. From the age of seven she was allowed to read anything in the library, all sorts of gothic romances. Whereas a Victorian father would have been, not quite covering the piano legs, but much more restrictive. ’

It was a time when women writers were making important contributions to cultural and social conversations.

“I took a twenty-year career break to bring up these four children. But all the time you ’ re learning about humans and society and all these families who live cheek by jowl – everything you learn about injustice and class and antennae were always up. And it has left me, not with wisdom, but insight into life. Stories to tell.

‘I became slightly obsessed by Mary Wollstonecraft bringing out pamphlets about the education of women, ’ says Gill.

‘And Fanny Burney – her journals are so utterly relatable. Yes, they put on corsets, but it ’ s extraordinary what their minds were like. People like Jane and Anne, brainy women who read lots of books – there ’ s no way they wouldn ’ t have looked around the world and thought it might have needed changing. The idea that feminism began in the 1970s is completely untrue. I don ’ t think our ideas are new. ’

All of Gill’ s finely observed novels involve women and the domestic sphere. ‘All four are family novels, and I’ m very interested in relationships between women, ’ she says. ‘I am a people watcher. I wrote The Hive from watching at the school gates, and I always find female friendships fascinating. ’

Gill, a mother of four and former BBC journalist, began writing The Hive when she lost a prestigious writing gig.

‘I’d been bringing up kids for twenty years, doing book reviewing and writing a column in The Telegraph and I got made redundant which was a real bugger, and I knew I wouldn ’ t get employed anywhere else because I was a woman in my fifties. And I was literally unemployed so I just sat down and wrote it. ’ Gill says she was ‘ stunned’ when it did well.

Both The Hive and Miss Austen were written without a commission. ‘It ’ s terrifying but very liberating, especially with Miss Austen when I had to make Jane do things, walk and talk. I thought probably no one ’ s ever going to read it, it was staying in a drawer. ’

The element of humour is very important to her. ‘I find novels without jokes in really weird. A joke is what makes us human – we have a laugh. I find domestic novels in which nobody makes a joke rather strange. Don ’ t tell me they didn ’ t have a laugh in times gone by. Can you imagine never having a laugh, or making a joke? It would just be rubbish. That ’ s what Jane Austen does and I think it ’ s why she ’ s so longlived as an author – we still laugh at the same things. ’

Gill is married to the thriller author Robert Harris, and her brother is Nick Hornby. ‘Of course Robert and Nick and I talk about writing, ’ she says. ‘We did before I started and we still do. Robert is my first reader and I’ m his. Robert ’ s a day to day constant. His self discipline is incredible. He ’ s at his desk first thing, nothing will deter him. I can ’ t say I emulate him completely but he ’ s got on in life because he ’ s unbelievably dedicated. I don ’ t encroach on Robert ’ s space. But then it ’ s not exactly competitive – he ’ s written twenty books and there isn ’ t going to be a catch up. He ’ s the one who first said I ought to write a novel. ’

She ’ s delighted to have found her voice as a writer at this stage in her life.

‘I never had anything to say when I was younger. It ’ s not enough to be able to craft a sentence. You have to have something to say. I took a twentyyear career break to bring up these four children. But all the time you ’ re learning about humans and society and all these families who live cheek by jowl – everything you learn about injustice and class and this over-stifling life of the family. My antennae were always up. And it has left me, not with wisdom, but insight into life. Stories to tell. It never occurred to me to write a novel. I hadn ’ t done a single word of creative writing since O-level – but it was the best option and the best way to tell The Hive. I found enormous joy in it. I was groping around for some sort of meaning. I knew from school that writing was my thing. ’

Working in journalism taught Gill a few useful tricks. ‘Journalism is an extremely good way of finding your voice, and the best way to tell a story, ’ she says. ‘In journalism you have to grab people by the throat at the beginning. And there ’ s the concept of a beginning, middle and an end. There is the odd novelist who hasn ’ t quite got that. If you ’ re going to be good try to be good at the beginning. Have a stab. You ’ ve got to get them onto page 2. ’

Another transferable journalism skill is the ability to write wherever you need to get words down. ‘The next one I’ll write in the shed, ’ she laughs. ‘This one I wrote in the dining room. I don ’ t have a notebook. I just kind of plunge in. When I’ m in it I stick my earplugs in and it ’ s fine. But I’ll walk the dog to death before I start it. A deadline is essential – I worked at the BBC before I had kids – but I wrote The Hive and Miss Austen without a deadline apart from personal humiliation. Rejection has been a primary motivator for me –the rocket fuel I need to get going. ’

As a writer of fiction carefully crafted to entertain and make its in-depth research accesssible, Gill’ s advice is to be generous to the reader. ‘Make sure you ’ ve got something to offer. Tell a story. Sit down and do it. Stick seat of paint to seat of the chair. You ’ re not a writer till you ’ ve got a reader. There ’ s no point in writing something nobody wants to read. But if there are two, there will be 2,000. ’