A
truly fascinating account of what research can lead to from today’s guest,
Louise Allen
I write historical romance, mainly
Georgian-set, so I have every excuse for lots of fascinating (and
work-postponing) research. My desk is heaped with books and original prints and
my PC bulges with files of references and the big problem is knowing when to
say “Stop!” and start getting on with the book.
A few years ago I had a light-bulb
moment and realised that I could use the research I was doing for my novels and
turn it into non-fiction, covering themes that interested me and which I hoped
would also interest my readers. That led me to producing a book of Walks Through Regency London, which in
turn led to Walking Jane Austen’s London
(Shire) and a regular blog, also about Jane Austen’s London.
That, I thought, would be that,
until I found myself wrestling with stagecoach timetables and Georgian road
maps and lists of inns as I tried to plot my heroine’s journey as she first of
all eloped, and then fled from her lover, in From Ruin to Riches. What I could not find was a book about the experience of stage and mail coach
travel for the passengers – so I wrote one, Stagecoach
Travel (Shire). Both experiences – the London walks and the stagecoach
research – led me to even more fiction plots and a real feeling of closeness
with my characters as I clambered in and out of stagecoaches, or had a
conversation with a gas-lamplighter in an atmospheric alleyway in St James’s.
(Yes, there really are lamplighters left in modern London.)
Researching stagecoach travel made
me wonder how much of the most famous of the coaching routes, the Great North
Road, can still be found, so my husband and I set out to travel it and found
the inns and the old bridges, the spots where highwaymen were hanged and
terrible coach accidents happened – and a deserted graveyard with the headstone
of a man killed in a duel with his close friend. Once more my notebooks filled
up with plot and character ideas and I felt more and more in touch with the
travellers of the time.
My latest book is the third in a
Waterloo trilogy (The Brides of Waterloo,
with Sarah Mallory and Annie Burrows.) My novel, A Rose For Major Flint, begins on the morning after the battle when
my hero, Adam Flint, rescues my heroine, a traumatised, speechless young woman
he calls simply, Rose, from a group of scavengers.
So, of course, I needed to know
what it was like on the battlefield that morning. To my amazement I discovered
that there were tourists on the field almost at first light, interrupting
Captain Mercer and his artillery troop as they ate their breakfast amidst the
carnage.
Soon I was accumulating first-hand
accounts by travellers who, in some cases, arrived on the scene within days.
From their words I knew what the battlefield looked like and smelled like and
what the ground was like underfoot. I discovered what the state of the roads
was and what was happening to the dead and injured and discovered tiny, heartbreaking
details, such as the patches of wildflowers left amidst the carnage. I read
about the gardener at Chateau Hougoumont who stayed throughout the battle and
was found wandering through his wrecked gardens, bewailing the bodies amongst
his cabbages, the farmer’s wife who was annoyed at the field hospital set up in
her barns, but was quite pleased to have had a general nursed in her cowshed
and the local peasants searching for items they could sell to the tourists –
the beginning of a local industry that endures to this day. From that research
came The Road to Waterloo: the first
battlefield tourists 1815-1816.
It is definitely a virtuous circle
– my novels demand research, then the research gives me the facts, and more
importantly the feel of what I am
investigating, and from that I can produce non-fiction books that I hope add
something deeper to my readers’ experience.
Louise Allen’s 50th
historical romance for Harlequin Mills & Boon comes out this year and she
is also the author of five historical non-fiction titles. She lives on the
North Norfolk coast with her husband and a garden full of bossy pheasants and
travels as much as possible in search of inspiration and to escape deadlines.
@LouiseRegency
Louise, you will have touched many
of us today with your references to Jane Austen, Regency London, Georgian road
maps and Waterloo. It would seem your knowledge is encyclopaedic. Cue for
another book?
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2 comments:
Very interesting post especially turning your research into something others can enjoy while giving you the chance to indulge even more!
I really enjoyed reading this. Thank you for sharing x
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