Anne here. This interview with Eva Ibbotson is a little different from most of the guest interviews we do here on Word Wenches. Eva is a Living Treasure and has just passed her 84th birthday. As you will see, however, Eva Ibbotson and her books, are ageless. The interview was conducted over the phone and transcribed by Eva's agent, Stephanie Thwaites. Thank you Stephanie and Eva for making this possible.
Eva Ibbotson has written some of my all-time favorite keeper books. She and Georgette Heyer are my top two desert island authors and comfort reads. I watched with dismay as the copies of her adult books went out of print and became more and more hard to find, so it's been a huge delight for me to see them reissued.
These adult romances are superb — and not "teenage novels" at all (which is how the publishers are now marketing them— I presume because there are no sex scenes.) Her stories are wonderfully textured, heartwarming and, to quote another Word Wench, "they have a magical blend of wit, sweetness, and emotion." I'm sure they'll delight a whole new generation of readers
Eva, welcome to the Word Wenches. You've written children's stories and romances for adults. What made you decide to write romances?
Eva: I had so much pleasure from Georgette Heyer that I wanted to write books that would please others in the same way. I think I was really writing the kind of book I wanted to read myself when I had the flu.
Anne: You certainly succeeded. Many of your books are set in a space between contemporary (almost within living memory) and historical, mostly between the wars, and you said once that your favourite year was 1910, which was well before you were born. What is it about that time that appeals to you?
Eva: Many of my books originate in my mother’s memoirs and the stories she told me about her childhood in Vienna. She was born in 1902 and it is the years after that date until she left Austria in the early 30s that I became most familiar with and took as my own terrain.
Anne: Your wonderful account of your personal connection with public libraries is still available to be read on-line, and it always draws a strong response when I've read it aloud at library talks. It begins:
I was eight years old when I came to Britain as a refugee - and was not particularly grateful. Mostly this was because after years and years of being a sheep coming to the manger, or a grazing cow, I had at last landed the part of the Virgin Mary in the nativity play at my convent school in Vienna.
And then ... Hitler.
Tell us a little about your life when you first came to live in England as a child. How did this life later come to feed your stories?
Eva: I came to England as an 8 year old girl; my parents had been separated for some years and I was a bit uncertain where I belonged. When we came to settle in London it was in the world of refugees and danger, and reading for me, as for so many children in those years, became a way of escape. But the cosmopolitanism of my fellow refugees made a rich tapestry which I used again and again when I began to write. (In THE MORNING GIFT I have explored this further).
Anne: There is a theory that people who are writers were often lonely children, or children who lived isolated lives or spent a lot of time on their own. Was that true for you
Eva: This was certainly true for me. I was an only child of parents very busy with their own separate careers and I remember very little family life as the words are understood. On the other hand the solitary journeys I made between my parents gave me lots of opportunities to get inside my own head.
Anne: What stories in English did you first fall in love with? Did you always want to be a writer?
Eva: I loved all the well known children’s books in English, there seemed to be far more than in German and they were wonderful. The Arthur Ransome books (SWALLOWS & AMAZONS) come to mind and everything by Frances Hodgson Burnett and L.M Montgomery. I loved school stories however silly!
Anne: One of the things I enjoy discovering about other writers is how particular books came to demand to be written. I read in an interview here that it was seeing a house demolished that made you think about ghosts being made homeless, and that led to the writing of your first children's book, "The Great Ghost Rescue."
Was there a particular spark of inspiration that germinated into Magic Flutes?
Eva: I visited Hochosterwitz on my last return visit to Austria well after the end of the war. It was completely over the top, and the basis of Pfafferstein. For the rest I have had a passion for Mozart’s music since I was six years old – my aunt was a teacher at the Vienna Conservatoire, and everybody brought up in Vienna gets dunked in Opera and the love story grew out of that. I thought the complete contrast with all that pomp would be Martha Hodge and Newcastle where I lived by then would be fun to do.
Anne: The reissued novels have different covers (and in some cases different titles) in the UK and US. I must say I prefer the US covers. Did you have any say in the covers and the retitling?
Eva: To be honest I don’t like any of the reissued covers whether English or American but I try not to make a fuss because marketing has become such and issue and evidently the covers work for teenagers. Change of title from MAGIC FLUTES to RELUCTANT HEIRESS was done without my knowledge and the Americans apologised very profusely – these things happen….
Anne: The Magic Flutes (aka The Reluctant Heiress) won the prestigious Romantic Novel of the Year in 1983, when it was first published. For those who've never had the joy of reading Eva Ibbotson, here is a taste, as our hero , Guy Farne, comes face to face with two elderly members of the crumbling aristocracy of post-war middle Europe:
Augustine-Maria, Duchess of Breganzer, was in her eighties, her eagle’s beak of a nose and fierce grey eyes dominating the wrinkled, parchment face. The Duchess wore a black lace dress, to the hem of which there adhered a number of cobwebs and what appeared to be a piece of cheese. A cap of priceless and yellowing lace was set on her sparse hair and her rather dirty, arthritic hands rested on a magnificent ivory cane which had once belonged to Marie Antoinette.
Her sister-in-law, Mathilde, Margravine of Attendorf and Untersweg, was a little younger and in spite of recent shortages, resolutely round-faced and plump. Unlike the Duchess, who had received them standing, the Margravine remained seated in order to embrace more efficiently the quivering, shivering form of a goggle-eyed and slightly malororous pug whose lower extremeties were wrapped in a gold-embroidered Medici cope.
Anne: Your "Mittel-European sensibility" and the world you portrayed in this book (and others) of the crumbling aristocracy, the up-and-coming thrusting new money, the snobs, the opportunists and the heroes — it all has such an authentic feeling to it. How much (if any) of this is based on your own experience? (I would love it if you really knew a monkey gland prince.)
Eva: I have no direct personal experience of the crumbling aristocracy. My characters are drawn from reading and from my imagination. My father was a biologist and fashions like monkey gland injections were rife when he was young.
Anne: As well as heroes to-die-for and and gutsy, heart-wrenching heroines, you've created some marvelous minor characters. Do you have readers writing to you begging for some of your minor characters to have their own stories? I confess, one I'd love to see is Ollie's story. And Sergei's. And I'd like a romance for Martha Hodge too.
Eva: The minor characters are incredibly important; indeed the word minor hardly fits. To be honest I don’t quite know where they come from but this is the case altogether with writing; it remains mysterious. I’ll think about a romance for Martha Hodge!
Anne: You create wonderful antiheroes — I think my favorite is the fiancée of the hero in Countess Below Stairs, so smooth-skinned, beautiful and smugly ruthless. Yet you treat them with kindness in the end, often more than I think they deserve.
Eva: Perhaps it’s because I thought of myself as plain and unattractive (in spite of a very happy marriage) that my anti-heroines are usually beautiful and voluptuous and smug.
Anne : Guy Farne is a splendid hero. I loved the story of how he grew up, a small hero in need of dragons to slay and heroines to rescue. The relationship between him and his foster mother is beautiful. And when he sees our heroine.. .sigh. Kindness and honor and strength.
Your heroes are often trapped between honor and their hearts desire, and as they're the sort of men who would never compromise their honor, their future often seems doomed to polite misery. The resolutions to their dilemmas in both Countess Below Stairs and Magic Flutes are particularly good fun, as those concerned are beautifully hoist with their own petard (she says trying not to give any of the story away.) Are you the sort of writer who plots stories out in advance or do they take you on a journey that unfolds as you write? Have you even painted yourself into a corner?
Eva: The kind of dichotomy between honour and passion is as old as the hills and I must say getting my heroes out of their dilemmas has sometimes not been easy. This is where the so called minor characters come in – like the Littlest Heidi in MAGIC FLUTES. I only know the broad outline of a story when I begin; the way obstacles are produced and then cleared up comes as I go along. It can be an awful headache!
Anne: Some of your children's stories, for instance "Journey to the River Sea" have been transformed into stage plays. I would love to see your adult novels turned into a BBC mini-series or three. Any chance of this?
Eva: I too would like to see my adult novels turned into plays or films – there’s an option out on THE MORNING GIFT so keep your fingers crossed.
Anne: You said once in an interview that you thought of your books as a present for readers and, for me and countless others, they have indeed been the most wonderful gift. I hope they're in print for many more years. Thank you.
Eva: Thank you. I meant what I said about trying to think of my books as presents- which means that the reader wants to know what happens and not too much about my soul, or the sunset. I’m glad you’ve enjoyed the books. All the best, Eva.
Anne again: Eva Ibbotson is not able to join us for a discussion on Word Wenches, however I have promised to forward all the messages and comments to her, via her agent, so whether you're an old fan or new fan, this is your chance to send her a message. What's your favourite of her characters or books? Or if you haven't read her yet (lucky you, what a treat in store) -- what qualities do you love in a hero or heroine? (A commenter will be chosen at random to receive a copy of one of Eva's newly reissued books)