Mrs Bates of Highbury - Highbury 1
Formats: E-Book, Paperback, Large print
Ages: 12-15, 16-18, 18+
Thirty years before the beginning of 'Emma' Mrs Bates is entirely different from the elderly, silent figure familiar to fans of Jane Austen’s fourth novel. She is comparatively young and beautiful, widowed - but ready to love again. She is the lynch-pin of Highbury society until the appalling Mrs Winwood arrives, very determined to hold sway over that ordered little town.
Miss Bates is as talkative aged twenty nine as she is in her later iteration, with a ghoulish fancy, seeing disaster in every cloud. When young Mr Woodhouse arrives looking for a plot for his new house, the two strike up a relationship characterised by their shared hypochondria, personal chariness and horror of draughts.
Jane, the other Miss Bates, is just seventeen and eager to leave the parochialism of Highbury behind her until handsome Lieutenant Weston comes home on furlough from the militia and sweeps her - quite literally - off her feet.
Reviews
There is a lot of Austen inspired fiction out there, but is rare to find a piece that is so well written, engaging, in-keeping with canon, and true to Austen’s style and the integrity of her genre. It is clear that Allie Cresswell has a real love for Austen’s work and this shines through in ‘Mrs Bates of Highbury’. She emulates Austen’s style masterfully - it feels completely natural to read, as though writing in this style comes effortlessly to her. Ms Cresswell’s work preserves all of Austen’s humour and irony - complete with her signature free indirect discourse! Although one does not need to have read ‘Emma’ to enjoy this novel, the key themes and motifs that make ‘Emma’ what it is are apparent from Chapter 1 - the place of women in society, the power of imagination (for good or ill), the obstacles to open expression and the misunderstandings this can cause (ah, those misunderstandings!). Ms Cresswell weaves a rich tapestry between her own work and Austen’s. There’s some beautiful proleptic irony: in Chapter 1, Henrietta Bates accidentally insults her mother, who implores her, ‘think how what you say will affect others,’ and although it is almost 10 years since I last read ‘Emma’, I was immediately reminded of the ‘Box Hill’ chapter in Austen’s novel, in which Emma insults Miss Bates and is later mortified by what she has done. This early conversation in ‘Mrs Bates...’ also foreshadows the way in which Hetty’s own story unfolds. It is with skills such as this that Ms Cresswell both sets the tone for her own work and bridges the 200+ years between herself and Austen to blend their work seamlessly together. Writing a prequel must be difficult in some ways - one is essentially developing characters backwards, and readers already know what’s going to happen at the end. It is a skilled writer who can do both of these things so successfully as to create a journey that enthrals the reader so thoroughly that they almost forget the ultimate destination that must be reached, as determined by canon. The story given to us by Ms Cresswell is gripping from start to finish, packed with humour (it’s laugh out loud funny in places!) and moments of sadness alike. I loved it. Were she alive today, I think Miss Austen would approve. I look forward to reading the other books in the series.
