PBS Books Readers Club welcomes international best-selling author Gill Hornby to discuss her novel Miss Austen. The episode premiered on April 30th at 8PM ET on Facebook, YouTube, and the PBS app.
Opening in 1840s England, two decades after her beloved sister Jane’s death, elderly spinster Cassandra Austen returns to the vicarage of Kintbury on a mission to collect and destroy letters written by Jane. Cassandra must navigate time, strained relationships, and a meddling housemaid while on her mission to protect her late sister’s legacy. With each letter she reads, floods of vivid memories resurface, bringing both joy and sorrow.
Miss Austen weaves a story that blends the youthful promise and romance of early years with the hard-earned wisdom of experience.
In the interview, Hornby discusses her research and writing process, the joys and challenges of revisiting the world and writing style of Jane Austen, her recommended reads, and more.
“Cassandra didn’t just do Jane’s reputation a service by burning so many letters, she did me a great service as well because she created all these holes in Jane’s life story… and it was into there, into those pockets, that I could put my imagination.” – Gill Hornby
PBS Watch-Alike: Miss Austen, an adaptation of Hornby’s novel, comes to life on screen in a limited series on PBS Masterpiece. The four-part show will premiere Sunday, May 4th at 9pm EST.
About the Author
Gill is a journalist whose debut novel, The Hive, sold to Little, Brown UK in a heated auction. US rights were pre-empted by Reagan Arthur Books. It’s about a group of women who meet at the school gates each day and – under the guise of the school’s charity committee – scheme, support, compete and jostle for position in their unspoken but fiercely run hierarchy. The book was published in the UK in May 2013 and went straight into the top ten bestseller list. Gill’s second novel, All Together Now, was published in June 2015 (Little, Brown UK)— the Daily Telegraph described it as ‘a sparkling comedy of manners’.
In January 2020 her first foray in historical fiction, Miss Austen (Cornerstone), was published to critical acclaim and instant anticipation, appearing on many ‘Books to Watch in 2020’ lists and receiving glowing reviews in the national papers. Called ‘pitch perfect’ by Kirsty Wark and ‘deeply imagined and deeply moving’ by Karen Joy Fowler, it retells the life of England’s most famous female novelist from the perspective of her forgotten sister, Cassandra, and examines the real-life mystery of why she burned so many of Jane’s letters, a conundrum which has baffled literary historians for centuries. Miss Austen was a Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller. It has been developed as a four-part television starring Keeley Hawes by the BBC.
Gill’s Hornby’s Godmersham Park returns to the life of the celebrated Regency novelist with the deeply moving tale of a young governess in the Austen family. It was published by Cornerstone in June 2022, and became a Sunday Times Bestseller shortly after. Waterstones selected the paperback of Godmersham Park as their Fiction Book of the Month for January 2023. It had recently been optioned by Federation Stories and Bonnie Productions for TV.
Gill is currently working on her third novel in the Austen series, to be published by Century.
About the Author
Charlotte McConaghy
Charlotte is an Australian author living in Sydney with her partner and two children.
She has a Masters Degree in Screenwriting from the Australian Film Television and Radio School, and a number of published SFF works in Australia.
Her novel MIGRATIONS was her first foray into adult literary fiction, published in North America by Flatiron Books, and by Penguin Random House in Australia and the UK. It is being translated into over 25 languages, and adapted to film.
ONCE THERE WERE WOLVES, the New York Times Bestseller, is a romantic mystery about a biologist charged with reintroducing wolves to the Scottish Highlands in order to rewild the landscape and bring a forest back to life.
Her third novel WILD DARK SHORE continues her love of romantic thrillers set in beautiful, remote places, and explores not only what it takes to raise children in a collapsing world, but the impossible choices we make to protect those we love.
