The Wenches are delighted to have bestselling author Eloisa James as our guest today. Eloisa has been writing since the age of 5, when she penned family plays and charged her parents exorbitant admission fees to watch them. A professor of English literature specializing in Shakespeare, she lived a double life for a time. A few years ago, there was some fainting (well, it could have happened) in the academic community when she came out as a romance writer. If I didn’t already like her, I certainly would have developed a powerful admiration after learning of this and reading her marvelous defense of the romance genre in the New York Times.
Eloisa’s most recent book, DESPERATE DUCHESSES, was released May 29 to rave reviews. I could try to capsulize this story, but I won’t, as the few lines space permits could never convey its many delights, from the father who writes terrible poetry and cries to the Worst Seamstress Known to Woman to....
Never mind. If you’ve read it, you know. If you haven’t, you’re in for a treat. On to the interview.
Being a nerd, I ask nerdy questions, but do please chime in with your own queries and comments. One of you will win an Eloisa James book and a box of chocolate dominoes.
LC: Unlike your previous books, DESPERATE DUCHESSES is set in the 1780s, the Georgian era. On your website you mention wanting a challenge, after twelve Regency-set historicals. Could you tell us more about what made you choose the Georgian era? What drew you to this time period?
EJ: The Regency period is great fun to write about in part because of the codes that governed the behavior of men and women regarding marriage, courtship, adultery, etc. It’s a challenge to create characters who are historically accurate (or reasonably so) and still engage the sympathy of thoroughly modern women. It’s also a challenge to design the courtship of two characters who are not supposed to be private together or even kiss.
I started thinking about the Georgian period because there were so many fewer strictures. Basically, society was a lot wilder. Noblewomen were frequently unfaithful to their husbands, and many couples lived apart. Women moved to Paris and lived there. There was more impropriety, both before and after marriage. It suited the story I wanted to tell -- about a set of wild duchesses.
LC: What were the biggest challenges of changing eras? Now that you’ve lived in the 18th C for a while, how do you feel about continuing there for several more books?
EJ: Hands down, the biggest challenge is the research. There’s a different feel to the Georgian period. Many of the little strictures are gone. Women are much freer, talking about sex in conversation, singing bawdy songs, trading jokes about impotence and desire. I had to move into that language and rhythm. Reading letters helped a great deal. I also backed up and read letters written in the Restoration--they gave me even more of that rowdy feeling.
LC: With its several subplots, this story had the feel of a Georgian-era novel, like TOM JONES. You’ve spun a deliciously intricate spider’s web. While Damon and Roberta’s love story is primary--and the arc of this story is perfect, by the way--the troubled relationship of the Duke and Duchess of Beaumont’s seems to be the heart of the web--with the other stories radiating out from it. Have I got this right? And can you tell us more about your vision for the series as a whole?
EJ: My series tend to have an over-arching story, a thread that continues from book to book. It gives me a greater canvas: so in my last series, Imogen elopes and is widowed: her story continues through four books. The same is true here. I relish the longer time period and great word count so that I can develop a really complicated story, either of a marriage (in this case) or a woman’s life. Jemma will be the focus of the longer arc, though I can’t tell you that she will necessarily end the last book with her duke.
LC: This blog loves costume talk, and I think you’ve plenty to say, having made such brilliant use of clothing. You use it to show us character and to forward plot elements--most notably in the case of a wicked game of dominoes--along with creating a potent sense of time and place. What did you need to do, to understand Georgian dress, what it could mean and how it could be used?
EJ: I read books of costume, of course. Most helpful to me was a plain little book called HANDBOOK OF ENGLISH COSTUME IN THE 18TH CENTURY by C. Willet Cunnington and Phillis Cunnington. But reading plays helped the most. Popular plays from the Georgian period give a vivid sense of how people used fans, or moved in dresses and side-panniers. I should watch the movies, but I haven’t found time.
LC: Were there any elements of Georgian dress you found particularly enlightening or useful or hilarious? Did you ever wish your people were in Regency dress instead, or were you completely seduced by the world of Dangerous Liaisons?
EJ: Well, Regency dress is really fun to write about because it’s so obviously sexy. There is a moment in DESPERATE DUCHESSES when my hero pulls down my heroine’s bodice -- and my research assistant pointed out that given her structured undergarments, and stiff bodice, that was not a very true-to-life moment. I think I fixed it somehow, but I did feel a pulse of nostalgia for the way the Regency garments basically fall off the body.
That said, there is something enormously enticing about a woman whose clothing needs to be truly taken off, in an almost ritual manner. I love the wigs, in particular.
LC: And speaking of seduction: Some of the Wenches find Georgian men much sexier than Regency men. What about you? Mr. Darcy or Tom Jones? Or both?
EJ: Either one as long as they had an obsessive-compulsive relationship toward bathing!
LC: If there’s anything you’d like to tell us about Georgian corsets--or other forms of underwear--this is the place to tell it. Dress/undress is a favorite subject.
EJ: Nope.
LC: The chess games in this story absolutely vibrated with tension, sexual as well as psychological. I’m still trying to figure out how you can teach, write novels, raise children, and be a chess expert. Please elucidate.
EJ: I’m no chess expert -- I can’t even play. But I am huge believer in the ability of writers to absorb information from experts and (in essence) fake it. I’m a Shakespeare professor, and one of my graduate students gave a paper on that scene in THE TEMPEST when the lovers are “discovered” playing chess. They were in private, and this paper investigated the fact that men and women were allowed to play chess together in private, back to the Middle Ages -- and frequently those games happened in a bedchamber. Then I discovered that one of my closest friends in the English Department is ranked just below a chess master. He talked; I listened. He lent me chess magazines and chess books. I firmly believe any of us can absorb enough to depict almost any skill in words.
LC: A Publishers Weekly review compares you to Shakespeare, a comparison you’ve rejected. But you are a Shakespeare scholar--and your love of language and appreciation of literature is clear on every page of DESPERATE DUCHESSES. We Wenches often talk about the difficulties of balancing the urge for historical minutiae with the needs of our readers, who come to us for love stories, not dissertations. Does having a double life--professor & romance novelist--take care of this problem, or do you, too, struggle for balance?
EJ: I don’t seem to have much of a problem there, perhaps because I come to romances for the stories. I was a scholar before I was a writer, and so I never bothered to read romances for fact--but for the core of it, the romance. Perhaps every writer really writes for themselves. I know that I try very hard to write the kind of books that I would like to read. And I don’t need any lectures on the politics of the 1800s, but I long, and always have, for funny books about men and women’s relationships.
LC: DESPERATE DUCHESSES tantalizes us with a number of secondary characters. Some appear briefly, others make a lengthier stay...but they're all so intriguing! Can you give us an idea of what the next book holds for us?
EJ: Readers always hate this -- but the fact is that you may never see some of those people again. How can I create a “thick” enough world, a round-enough world, if I don’t people it? And yet I’m not Trollope--I can’t keep series going for 18-19 books, just to pair off every single person who gets mentioned. I’m sorry... Some will reappear and many won’t. But (she said cheerfully) there’s lots of new characters in the next book. Which is called AFFAIR BEFORE CHRISTMAS, by the way, and will be published November 15th. It’s actually rather delicious.
I can tell you that the Duke of Villiers has a large role in AFFAIR. My guess is that people are going to be very interested by him!
LC: Finally, what didn’t I ask that you’d like to answer?
EJ: I’ve heard about your “Extra” chapters -- what are they?
As soon as a book is published, I put up a topic in my bulletin board asking one simple question: what chapter did you wish had been in the book and it wasn’t? After giving people a few weeks to read the book, we select the top three or four candidates and every one votes.
And then I write that chapter and put it up on my website (on the Extras page). 
For THE TAMING OF THE DUKE, I wrote one more scene in bed. 
For PLEASURE FOR PLEASURE , I skipped ahead a few years, and brought all my sisters back into a conversation together in which they discussed their children and their husbands.
For DESPERATE DUCHESSES...I don’t know! Please read the book and then tell me what you want!