SPOTLIGHT: Jo Baker on why she wrote Longbourn
On the blog today, Jo Baker tells the story behind the writing of her brilliant novel Longbourn which reimagines Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice from the point of view of the servants of the house.
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Jo Baker
I can’t even remember when I first read Pride and Prejudice, it seems like I’ve always known that book. Jane Austen was my first experience of grown-up literature, and I have continued to return to and love her work throughout my life. I admire her books enormously, as a writer - the immaculate prose, the deft plotting. I’m also a sucker for all that buttoned-up desire and wish-fulfilment. Who isn’t?
But as I read and re-read the books, I began to become aware - I remember saying at quite a young age - that if I’d been living at the time, I wouldn’t have got to go to the ball. I would’ve been stuck at home, with the sewing. Just a few generations back, my family were in service (we still have some cutlery from this era. My great aunt maintained it was a ‘gift’ from her employer; her sisters all believed that she’d
nicked it). I am not a gentleman’s daughter, as Elizabeth so assuredly is. (No offence, Dad.)
Aware of that - of that English class thing - Pride and Prejudice begins to read a little differently. You notice a name here and there, or an unnamed figure performing a role. Footman, housemaid. You realise that things just ‘happen’ - notes arrive, carriages are brought round, meals are served - but they actually require human agency to make them occur. I noticed these little flickers of activity
below the surface, and was intrigued.
But Longbourn really began to take shape when I re-read the line ‘the very shoe-roses for Netherfield were got by proxy’. The weather is far too bad for the Bennet girls to venture forth, so they send a maid to get soaked on their behalf. But she’s as real a human being as they are - insofar as any of these fictional characters can be.
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And thinking about Pride and Prejudice in this way began to raise other questions.
The Napoleonic War, and the civil unrest of the period are implicit in the book - all those handsome officers, all those troops billeted in Meryton. And that chilling throwaway line of Lydia’s, that a private had been flogged. I found myself thinking about this man. His suffering must have been terrible.
I wanted to explore the reality of soldiering in this period, and to think about not just the dashing officers in their scarlet coats, but the ordinary footsoldiers who came back from the front lines damaged, as men are by war.
The domestic detail in Longbourn I gathered from a lot of sources; history books, contemporary domestic guides and recipes and practical research. In the village where I grew up there was an old house that had the kinds of outhouses and kitchen I’ve imagined for Longbourn - even a ‘necessary house’, made redundant by indoor plumbing, but with multiple wooden seats still in place. We used to play in the grounds as children - it’s all been redeveloped now, but I re-occupied it in my
imagination for this book.
Tea-leaves as a cleaning method were still in use when my dad was a boy; I sweep my own wooden floors with tea-leaves now - my kids thought I was mad at first, lobbing handfuls of the stuff around the house, but it really works. Tea is mildy antiseptic, the tannic acid gives a subtle shine, and it’s totally ecological - no chemicals, no waste, completely free once you’ve made your tea.
A lot of the research behind Longbourn was amassed over time, without me really being aware of it. I already knew, for example, the English law of the period in relation to slavery, and that there were quite a few former slaves in the country, often brought over as servants; in Austen’s letters she mentions
a family friend who has a black servant. And then of course the Bingleys were in Trade, in the north - and there were slave-ports in the north of England (I live in one of them, Lancaster), and
it just seemed right that they might have a black servant, like Austen’s neighbours. And he would seem just so fascinating to a girl who’s seen nothing, been nowhere. It all just seemed to fit.
In her letters, Austen mentions two sisters who worked for her as seamstresses. They were called Miss Baker. Okay, it’s a common name, but still, the co-incidence was striking. It confirmed that my first thought was right: I’d have been stuck at home with the other servants, with the cleaning and cooking and
the mending. And I wanted to explore the reality of that, to show that real human
experience.
That’s why I wrote Longbourn.
[image error]
[image error]
Jo Baker
I can’t even remember when I first read Pride and Prejudice, it seems like I’ve always known that book. Jane Austen was my first experience of grown-up literature, and I have continued to return to and love her work throughout my life. I admire her books enormously, as a writer - the immaculate prose, the deft plotting. I’m also a sucker for all that buttoned-up desire and wish-fulfilment. Who isn’t?
But as I read and re-read the books, I began to become aware - I remember saying at quite a young age - that if I’d been living at the time, I wouldn’t have got to go to the ball. I would’ve been stuck at home, with the sewing. Just a few generations back, my family were in service (we still have some cutlery from this era. My great aunt maintained it was a ‘gift’ from her employer; her sisters all believed that she’d
nicked it). I am not a gentleman’s daughter, as Elizabeth so assuredly is. (No offence, Dad.)
Aware of that - of that English class thing - Pride and Prejudice begins to read a little differently. You notice a name here and there, or an unnamed figure performing a role. Footman, housemaid. You realise that things just ‘happen’ - notes arrive, carriages are brought round, meals are served - but they actually require human agency to make them occur. I noticed these little flickers of activity
below the surface, and was intrigued.
But Longbourn really began to take shape when I re-read the line ‘the very shoe-roses for Netherfield were got by proxy’. The weather is far too bad for the Bennet girls to venture forth, so they send a maid to get soaked on their behalf. But she’s as real a human being as they are - insofar as any of these fictional characters can be.
[image error]
And thinking about Pride and Prejudice in this way began to raise other questions.
The Napoleonic War, and the civil unrest of the period are implicit in the book - all those handsome officers, all those troops billeted in Meryton. And that chilling throwaway line of Lydia’s, that a private had been flogged. I found myself thinking about this man. His suffering must have been terrible.
I wanted to explore the reality of soldiering in this period, and to think about not just the dashing officers in their scarlet coats, but the ordinary footsoldiers who came back from the front lines damaged, as men are by war.
The domestic detail in Longbourn I gathered from a lot of sources; history books, contemporary domestic guides and recipes and practical research. In the village where I grew up there was an old house that had the kinds of outhouses and kitchen I’ve imagined for Longbourn - even a ‘necessary house’, made redundant by indoor plumbing, but with multiple wooden seats still in place. We used to play in the grounds as children - it’s all been redeveloped now, but I re-occupied it in my
imagination for this book.
Tea-leaves as a cleaning method were still in use when my dad was a boy; I sweep my own wooden floors with tea-leaves now - my kids thought I was mad at first, lobbing handfuls of the stuff around the house, but it really works. Tea is mildy antiseptic, the tannic acid gives a subtle shine, and it’s totally ecological - no chemicals, no waste, completely free once you’ve made your tea.
A lot of the research behind Longbourn was amassed over time, without me really being aware of it. I already knew, for example, the English law of the period in relation to slavery, and that there were quite a few former slaves in the country, often brought over as servants; in Austen’s letters she mentions
a family friend who has a black servant. And then of course the Bingleys were in Trade, in the north - and there were slave-ports in the north of England (I live in one of them, Lancaster), and
it just seemed right that they might have a black servant, like Austen’s neighbours. And he would seem just so fascinating to a girl who’s seen nothing, been nowhere. It all just seemed to fit.
In her letters, Austen mentions two sisters who worked for her as seamstresses. They were called Miss Baker. Okay, it’s a common name, but still, the co-incidence was striking. It confirmed that my first thought was right: I’d have been stuck at home with the other servants, with the cleaning and cooking and
the mending. And I wanted to explore the reality of that, to show that real human
experience.
That’s why I wrote Longbourn.
[image error]
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