Recent posts have been about the best way to use history in historical fiction. The goal is to use as much history as possible without burying the story in unnecessary details or derailing the story with unnecessary asides. You want to have history support your story. You don’t want the…
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Category: Historical Fiction
Judy O’Grady and the Purchased Lady
While researching The Marriage of Miss Jane Austen, my trilogy on the life of Jane Austen, I ran across a fascinating book called Judy O’Grady and the Colonel’s Lady: The Army Wife and Camp Follower Since 1660. The work is titled after a Kipling poem, in which he says the…
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Putting the History in Historical Fiction
Ernest Hemingway once said: “If a writer knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows. … The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water.” This non-obvious lesson is one I learned and relearned in…
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Book Launch of ‘Austen Marriage’; Plus Excerpt, Giveaway!
Having written the last several times about Jane Austen’s relationships with men–and the confusion about which relationships were real and which ones lacked supporting evidence–I am announcing today the launch of the last volume in my trilogy based on her life, “The Marriage of Miss Jane Austen.” True to what…
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Last Volume of ‘Marriage’ Available for Pre-order
My last several posts have provided background on what little is known about Jane Austen’s relationships with men. In short, several promising relationships ended prematurely and, according to tradition, she lived a quiet life as a spinster, composing or extensively revising her novels at the family cottage in the village…
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Last Pieces Snap into Place in Austen Puzzle
Stepping back 200 years, what we see in Jane Austen’s personal life are tantalizing hints of relationships but primarily obfuscation about any possible romances from 1802, when she was 26, until her retirement to Chawton Cottage with the other Austen women in 1809. As described in my last two blogs,…
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A Dance to Time: When Wellington Became a Janeite
The “Long War,” as it was known in the day, raged between England and France during almost all of Jane Austen’s adulthood. Two of her brothers served in the Navy, and the others served in or supported the Militia. England’s problem from the start was that it had no effective…
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A Modest Proposal: Might the Spinster Have Married?
As reported in last month’s blog about Jane Austen’s romantic attachments, biographers dutifully recount the story of Jane’s acceptance/rejection of a proposal by Harris Bigg-Wither, a young, brash man six years her junior, on Thursday-Friday, 2-3 December 1802. The story goes that Jane and Cassandra journeyed to Manydown, the Bigg-Wither…
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Brotherly Love?
In a recent blog, I wrote about the general but oft ignored belief that cousins should not marry. Cousin marriage was fashionable in Jane Austen’s time among the wealthy, but it also happened more than once in Jane’s immediate family. Her brother Henry (top, by headline) married their cousin Eliza, and the…
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Engaging Stories About Miss Austen and Her Beaus
How many times was Jane Austen engaged—or married (!)? Thoughts about her short life—and her emotional life, whatever it may have been—bubble up in this year of 2017, the 200th anniversary of her death. Officially, Austen was engaged once, for less than a day, to a young, callow Harris Bigg-Wither,…
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Rules of the Road for Regency Language
Recently, some writers online were discussing language, particularly the use of language for an historical period such as the Regency age. I was traveling and unable to jump into the discussion, but the comments set me to reflect about my approach—which I had considered for quite a while as I…
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Just Jane
“The Marriage of Miss Jane Austen: Volume 1″/ By Collins Hemingway/ A Review & Giveaway The Marriage of Miss Jane Austen reimagines the life of England’s most famous female author by asking: How would her life have changed if she had married and had a child? How would this thinking…
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News Release
Author Collins Hemingway Hosts Book Launch for The Marriage of Miss Jane Austen: Volume II at Jane Austen Festival in Bath, England BATH, England, 7 Sept., 2016 – Author Collins Hemingway will officially launch Volume II of The Marriage of Miss Jane Austen Trilogy, a new historical novel based on…
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News Release
The Marriage of Miss Jane Austen Trilogy’s Volume II Now Available for Pre-order Official book launch at Jane Austen Festival in Bath, England, in September PORTLAND, Oregon, August 30, 2016 – Volume II of The Marriage of Miss Jane Austen Trilogy, a new historical novel based on Austen’s life, is…
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Pre-order Volume II — Just $3.99
I try to write interesting, thoughtful blogs on a semi-regular basis, so I hope readers will indulge the rare promotional notice. Especially when it involves eighteen months of hard work and relates directly to the existence of this website. Meaning, I’m very pleased to announce that Volume II in “The…
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Help us pick the cover for Volume II
Volume II of The Marriage of Miss Jane Austen trilogy will be launched in September at the Jane Austen Festival in Bath, England. In the new book you will learn more about Jane Austen during the “lost years” of her life—seven years of which historians have little to no information. The…
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North America Winner of Sweepstakes Announced
Please join me in congratulating Karen vanMeenen of Rochester, New York, the Grand Prize Winner from the US in The Marriage of Miss Jane Austen Sweepstakes 2016. She has won a fantastic Grand Prize trip for two to the beautiful UNESCO World Heritage City of Bath, England, to attend the…
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UK Winner of Sweepstakes Announced for Bath Festival
Drum roll, please! It’s time to announce our Grand Prize Winner from Great Britain in “The Marriage of Miss Jane Austen” Sweepstakes 2016. Vicki Smith of Manea in Cambridgeshire, England, is our lucky Grand Prize Winner! She has won an exciting Grand Prize trip for two to the beautiful UNESCO…
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JASNA Interviews Collins
Collins Hemingway was recently interviewed by Christopher Duda, Treasurer of the Eastern Pennsylvania Region of the Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA), about The Marriage of Miss Jane Austen and what inspired him to write a novel about one of the world’s most beloved English writers. Listen to the…
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First Monthly Winner of 2016 Bath Sweepstakes
We have our first winner of the monthly prize of our 2016 Bath Sweepstakes, which is a signed copy of The Marriage of Miss Jane Austen. This is the first of several smaller prizes before we select the grand prize winner, which will be a trip for two to Bath,…
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Austen Sweepstakes Offers Grand Prize of Trips to Bath
Trips to Bath, England, are the grand prizes of The Marriage of Miss Jane Austen Sweepstakes 2016, to coincide with the city’s annual Jane Austen Festival in September 2016. The sweepstakes, which honors Jane Austen, her work, and the many readers around the world who have made her a literary…
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Reader Thoughts on ‘Marriage,’ Austen’s Journey of the Soul
’Tis better to give than receive, but in this holiday season I would like to take a moment to thank readers for what I have received—their very generous thoughts and comments on my novel, The Marriage of Miss Jane Austen. What touched me most was the number of times “beautiful”…
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Wilsonville Spokesman
December 16, 2015 Marrying Microsoft and Jane Austen It may come as some surprise that after several decades co-authoring nonfiction works on science and business with the likes of Bill Gates, Eugene-based writer Collins Hemingway — who is unrelated to Ernest Hemingway — should direct his efforts to a literary…
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Diana Jordan podcast interview with Collins Hemingway
An interview with Author Collins Hemingway
booksworld.com
October 9 Collins Hemingway Pens Novel About Jane Austen
GeekWire
October 8, 2015 Former Microsoft exec, who co-authored a book with Bill Gates, tackles the world of Jane Austen
News Release
Ex-Microsoft Exec Goes from High Tech to Novel About Jane Austen Historical fiction imagines impact of mature love on author’s life, work; Early reviews positive on ‘imaginative journey of the soul’ PORTLAND, Oregon, October 8, 2015 – A long-time Microsoft executive who co-authored a book on business and the Internet…
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