Stephanie Barron: Jane and the Canterbury Tale

“You are very kind. But perhaps we may defer the pleasure until I am next in Kent? I am promised to my brother for this dance.”

I made my way through the breathless whirl of the ballroom and raised my glass to Edward’s. It was only lemonade, after all—but it would serve.

“To the future,” I said.

He studied my countenance. “After all you have seen in recent weeks, of the folly and bitterness of mankind, you still cherish hopes of the future , Jane?”

“I do.” I searched for Fanny’s face among the waltzing couples; she was more animated in Jupiter’s company this evening than I had observed her in days. “For what else do we live, Edward—but our hopes of joy to come?”

Since 1995, the Jane Austen Mystery series has been shaped and sustained by the genius of one person—Kate Burke Miciak, Editorial Director of Bantam Books. Kate was the first to recognize the possibilities of Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor , and her support for the series over the subsequent sixteen years and eleven novels has been unflagging. Janeites everywhere owe her a debt of gratitude; mine is one I can never repay.

Editors Caitlin Alexander and Randall Klein have patiently lent their expertise to this author through numerous books, with a control of temper that would have astounded our Jane.

Susan Corcoran—an enthusiastic Janeite if ever there was one—promoted the series in its early years, then handed the baton to Sharon Propson and Lisa Barnes, crack publicists who constantly found ingenious ways to win readers’ attention.

Borrowing Jane’s voice and idiom is a tricky business, particularly for an American born two centuries too late, and without Kelly Chian’s deft supervision of copyedits—and her staff’s ability to catch every one of my egregious errors—these books would not have withstood the rigorous test of the critics’ eye. Thank you for saving me from myself.

Finally, Bantam’s art department spearheaded the commission of some pretty glorious cover art. Knowing Jane’s delight in frivolous dress, I’m sure she approves.

Stephanie Barron

Denver, Colorado

May 2011

Stephanie Barronis the author of the standalone historical suspense novels A Flaw in the Blood and The White Garden , as well as the Jane Austen mystery series. As Francine Mathews, she is the author of several novels of espionage, including The Alibi Club . She lives in Denver, Colorado.

Bentigh was an avenue of limes and yews. It led toward the old Norman church of St. Lawrence, where the Knight family worshipped. —Editor’s note.

Mr. Moore proves prescient here. George Finch-Hatton (1791–1858), the Jupiter of this account, did indeed succeed his cousin as 10th Earl of Winchilsea in 1826. He has gone down in history for having fought a duel with the Duke of Wellington, who was then Prime Minister, over Catholic Emancipation in 1829. Jupiter opposed it. — Editor’s note .

Members of Parliament and peers were permitted to affix their signatures or seals to letters, allowing them to be delivered free of charge—a practice known as “franking.” Otherwise, Cassandra would have paid the fee for Jane’s letter, according to its weight, upon receiving it from the post. — Editor’s note .

Jane is referring to events previously related in the volume of her detective adventures entitled Jane and the Genius of the Place. —Editor’s note .

Jane refers obliquely here to a period in Southampton, when her late friend Lord Harold Trowbridge taught her to fire a dueling pistol. The episode is recounted in the volume of her detective memoirs entitled Jane and the Ghosts of Netley. —Editor’s note .

Jane refers here to Maria Beckford, originally of Basing Park in Hampshire, who helped rear her dead sister’s children at the request of Mr. John Middleton, her brother-in-law. The Middletons leased Chawton Great House from Edward Austen from 1808 to 1813, and Maria Beckford visited Jane when both chanced to be in London. —Editor’s note.

Gentlemen, in Austen’s day, came of age at twenty-one. — Editor’s note .

Although Jane’s letters to Cassandra during this two-month visit to Godmersham say nothing of Curzon Fiske’s murder, no doubt due to Cassandra’s disapproval of Jane’s unseemly interest in detection, she does refer to the Moore family’s circumstances by directly quoting Fanny’s words on the subject. See Letter 95, dated November 5, 1813, in Jane Austen’s Letters (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), Deirdre Le Faye, editor. —Editor’s note .

Jane describes this trip to Canterbury in a subsequent letter to her sister Cassandra (Letter 94, dated Tuesday, October 26, 1813), but makes no mention of entering the gaol with Edward. She discloses a second visit to Canterbury gaol in Letter 95, dated November 3, 1813. — Editor’s note .

See Letter 94, dated Tuesday, October 26, 1813, in Jane Austen’s Letters , Deirdre Le Faye, editor, Oxford University Press, 1995. — Editor’s note .

Jane refers to the death of Henry Austen’s wife, Eliza de Feuillide, on April 25, 1813. An account of the weeks following Eliza’s death may be found in Jane and the Madness of Lord Byron (Bantam, 2010). — Editor’s note .

“Fuzzing the cards” and “Greeking methods” were cant euphemisms for cheating. —Editor’s note .

Colonel Thomas Wildman, though unacquainted with Jane Austen, would intersect the life of one of her contemporaries and fellow writers, when he purchased Newstead Abbey—ancestral home of George Gordon, Lord Byron—in 1818, for the considerable sum of £94,500. Wildman was a friend of Byron’s dating from their schooldays at Harrow. — Editor’s note .