We chat with author Natalie Jenner about Austen At Sea, which follows two pairs of siblings, devotees of Jane Austen, who find their lives transformed by a visit to England and Sir Francis Austen, her last surviving brother and keeper of a long-suppressed, secret legacy.
Hi, Natalie! Welcome back! How have the past five years been since we last spoke and what have you been up to?
Thank you so much for this chance to catch up! Since 2020, I have written and published three more novels during what has been a tumultuous time for so many. Writing has always been my happy place, and I consider myself incredibly lucky, as someone who was first published at age 52 in a worldwide pandemic, to be able to continue to tell stories for a living.
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
My mother says I wanted to be a writer even before I could read. I’m not sure what exactly this says about me, but somewhere in that desire was a love of both make-believe and getting attention of any kind!
Quick lightning round! Tell us:
- The first book you ever remember reading: on my own, Harriet the Spy
- The one that made you want to become an author: Harriet the Spy
- The one that you can’t stop thinking about: Harriet the—but seriously, The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
Your latest novel, Austen At Sea, is out May 6th! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Victorian fangirls outwit reluctant chaperone!
What can readers expect?
My whimsical ode to the Victorian novel, Austen at Sea is a transatlantic romp with a literary mystery and seriously twisted legal knot at its heart. There are four internal “books” in the literary style of that era, complete with individual chapter titles, and a cast of many characters. The main protagonists are two sisters in 1865 Boston who strike up a correspondence with Jane Austen’s last surviving sibling, Admiral Sir Francis Austen, and sneak away on the SS China to visit him. They are joined on ship by a unwanted chaperone who is a judge and colleague of their father, two Philadelphia rare book dealer brothers secretly also sailing at Admiral Austen’s request, a young senator’s daughter and socialite in hot pursuit of the brothers, and Louisa May Alcott, who in real life travelled on the China that same summer as an invalid’s companion. Other fictional characters include a London theater impresario, a newspaperman, a street waif, suffragists and Boston bluestockings, a fortune teller, a disgruntled divorce court judge, and the entire bench of the Massachusetts state supreme court.
Where did the inspiration for Austen At Sea come from?
Back in 2017, I had read in Professor Juliet Wells’s book Reading Austen in America about Eliza Quincy, one of Austen’s earliest and most famous American readers. Quincy wrote to Admiral Sir Francis Austen in 1852, mentioning how her Harvard president father had introduced his daughters to Jane Austen after he heard praise of her works from two members of the United States Supreme Court. This fact of history clearly inspired my book’s fictional Massachusetts judicial literary circle and its debates on Austen’s works which are peppered throughout my plot. I was also inspired by how boldly Eliza Quincy asked Sir Francis for the signature of his famous sister, and how a few years later her married sister practically vacation-stalked him in England. I remember thinking to myself, “These women are like the original groupies!” and I knew in that moment that I would one day write this book.
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
In the spring of 2023, I was listening to many audiobooks by and about Louisa May Alcott while recovering from surgery, as I have always admired her genius and perseverance alongside that of Austen. I did not yet know that Alcott herself would become a character in this new book, although I hoped she might, so I treated it as writerly fate when I learned that she had travelled to Europe from Boston the very same summer as my characters were about to do. I will never forget the moment when she showed up on the page out of the blue, standing alone at sunrise on the SS China, her hair still chopped and wavy from being shorn due to a bout with typhoid and with a little corn cob pipe in her mouth. I have never felt so inside the skin of a character before, let alone one based on a real-life person.
Can you tell us a bit about your research process?
Before I start any book, I want to know only three things but I absolutely must know all three: when the story will take place, where it will take place, and what is at stake. Then I do just enough research on the chosen time and setting to help me determine who my characters are and what challenges they might face. I want the story to always be my predominate focus, so any further research is done on a need-to-know-only basis. The real work comes at the end of the first few drafts, when the former lawyer in me conducts a sort of literary due diligence review. What follows are months (and months) of working to ensure that everything I have mentioned in the text either happened—or more importantly could have happened—in real life.
Did you face any challenges whilst writing? How did you overcome them?
Writing is a completely joyous and intuitive process for me. I love every second of it, partly because I write to find out what is going to happen. In this way, I experience both a writer’s and a reader’s high of sorts. But I do recall the moment, at the very start of the final internal book called “The Court,” when I had to put myself in the mind of England’s first divorce court judge as he conducts a hearing in London’s Old Hall, made famous in the Charles Dickens novel Bleak House. As described above, I do my research mostly as I go, so I had to force myself to just start typing and hope that my training as a lawyer three decades earlier would kick in enough to get me going—and keep me out of trouble.
What’s next for you?
After writing four published books in five years (with another one stuck in a drawer!), I am enjoying being in a “refill the well” phase. A lot of Criterion Channel, a lot of Amy Sherman-Palladino, a lot of books about Jane Austen. 2025 is the 250th anniversary of her birth and the last major Austen milestone that this rabid Janeite will get to celebrate in her lifetime.
Lastly, what books are you looking forward to picking up this year?
I read mostly non-fiction, memoir and familiar classics when I am writing (fear of bleed!) so I am looking forward this year to reading Graydon Carter’s When the Going Was Good and Emily Van Duyne’s Loving Sylvia Plath. I am also excitedly anticipating Helena Kelly’s new book The Worlds of Jane Austen which comes out in September, just a few months before her December birthday celebrations all over the world!
