“A Bibliophile’s Bookshelf” is proud to welcome Guest Blogger, Mary Lydon Simonsen, in joining us today. Mary is the author of the historical romance novel, Searching for Pemberley. Mary is going to talk today about the history behind Searching for Pemberley.

Set against Regency England, World Wars I and II, and postwar England, three love stories intertwine in surprising and fateful ways

American Maggie Joyce, touring Derbyshire in 1947, visits, Montclair, an 18th century Georgian country house, that she is told was the model for Jane Austen’s Pemberley. More amazingly, the former residents of the mansion, William Lacey and Elizabeth Garrison, were the inspiration for the characters of Fitzwilliam Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice.

Through letters, diary entries, and oral history, Beth and Jack Crowell, a couple who lives in the nearby village of Crofton, share stories of the people they say inspired Jane Austen. They also tell their own love story, made difficult by their vastly different backgrounds—she was one of the social elite while he was the son of a servant. When their son, Michael, travels home from his RAF station in Malta, Maggie may have just found her very own Mr. Darcy.

Greetings! Thank you for hosting me on A Bibliophile’s Bookshelf. I have been asked to write about any surprises I found while researching Searching for Pemberley, which is a story set in post World War II England. I was very familiar with this era, especially the Marshall Plan that helped rebuild the economies of our former enemies, Germany and Japan. But what was it like for our ally, Great Britain, in the years immediately following the war?

“V-E Day – It’s All Over”
The Daily Mail – May 8, 1945

“Japan Surrenders”
The Times of London – August 15, 1945

It was official. The wars in Europe and Asia were over. Six years of death and destruction had come to an end. In America, the auto industry, which had shut down automobile production in order to make tanks and bombers, was retooling their assembly lines so that they could crank out new Fords and Buicks. Lipstick tubes would be readily available at cosmetic counters because there was no longer a need to make millions of bullets. Since the Army didn’t require as many parachutes, women could stop painting seams on the back of their legs to make it look as if they were wearing nylons because the real thing was now in the stores. Best of all, gasoline was readily available. You could hop in your new Dodge sedan and drive cross-country from Maine to California. It was possible to do all these things—in the United States—but things were very different in Britain, and that was the major discovery I made while doing the research for my book. The austerity program that had existed in England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland all during the war continued for years after the Axis powers had surrendered.

My novel, Searching for Pemberley, takes place in 1947. Twenty-two year old American, Maggie Joyce, has taken a job working for the Army Exchange Service in London. When Maggie got off the train at Victoria Station, what would she have seen?

By the time Maggie arrived in England, Britain had been at war since September 1939. Its people and resources were exhausted. Streets were cordoned off because of unexploded bombs. Parts of London were a wasteland. Three weeks before a June victory parade was scheduled to take place in London, bread was added to the list of rationed items because of a shortage of white flour, and although bread rationing would end in 1948, the lean years would continue on into the 1950s. In Miami, they might be dancing to “My Dreams Get Better All the Time,” but in Britain, they were playing another tune entirely.

Because of this research, I had to make changes to my story. After learning that the characters of Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy may have been based on real people, Maggie visits Montclair, a manor house in Derbyshire that may actually be the storied Pemberley. During her quest, she is befriended by Beth and Jack Crowell, a couple who live in a nearby village and who know if these stories are true. Although the Crowells are financially well off, they still carry ration books and queue up for scarce food items just like everyone else. Because Maggie has access to the commissary, when she visits her friends, she comes bearing gifts: coffee, white bread, cookies, and sugar, which are then shared with their neighbors. All of these things were facts of life in post-war Britain and emerged as a result of my research.

But that is the fun in doing research—finding something unexpected—a historical nugget—to share with your readers. I hope by the time my readers reach the last chapter in Searching for Pemberley, they will have learned something about what it was like to have lived in Britain in the years following the defeat of Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan, and how fortunate most of us are because we never had to use ration coupons—the non-perforated, scissors required kind.

Have you experienced rationing or shortages? I queued up for gasoline in 1973 and again in 1979, and I have made toilet paper and milk runs to grocery stores ahead of hurricanes and blizzards. But like Old Mother Hubbard, when I got there, the shelves were bare. If you have had such an experience, maybe you would like to share it with Bibliophile’s readers.

About Mary Lydon Simonsen
Mary Simonsen grew up in North Jersey with the exciting venues of New York City easily accessible. She is largely self-educated and is especially interested in American and European history and 19th Century novels. In Searching for Pemberley she was able to combine her love of history (World War II and postwar England) with Austen’s characters, Miss Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy, and being a romantic, the novel includes three love stories from three different time periods, all thanks to Jane Austen. She lives in Peoria, Arizona. For more information, please visit http://searchingforpemberley.weebly.com/

Thanks Mary. Searching for Pemberley is such a wonderful story, full of historical details, and it was interesting to hear Mary speak about the history behind this story.

Now its GIVEAWAY time. The wonderful people at Sourcebooks are giving away 2 copies of Searching for Pemberley. That’s right 2 lucky people out there are going to win Mary’s new novel, Searching for Pemberley.
To enter just tell us: Have you experienced rationing or shortages? Unless I am to count a shortage of books and chocolate bars, I’m not sure I have experienced rationing or shortages!

Giveaway Rules:
US & Canada Only, no PO boxes please.
+1 for blogging/tweeting about this giveaway,
+1 if you follow me on Twitter/follower of my blog(+2 for both),
Giveaway ends November 29, 2009 at 5pm.

Tags: Giveaway, guest blog, mary lydon simonsen, searching for pemberley

Trackback URI | Comments RSS