Q&A with Stephanie Cowell

 

 

Stephanie Cowell is the author of the new novel The Man in the Stone Cottage. Her other books include The Boy in the Rain. She lives in New York City.

 

Q: What inspired you to write The Man in the Stone Cottage, which focuses on the Brontë family?

 

A: I have loved the Brontë sisters and their world since I was 14 years old. By age 23, I had saved enough money to fly to London and take an antiquated rocky bus to Haworth, Yorkshire, to visit their parsonage home which is now a museum.

 

I had met a Yorkshirewoman who took me walking on the very muddy, hilly moors where I ruined my delicate blue shoes. I loved the world and suddenly decades later started a novel about Charlotte which I soon abandoned.

 

But some years after that, I thought of one scene in that novel (when the young Brontë children go to buy paper to write their tiny books) and I could not bear to lose that scene, so sat down and wrote Cottage.

 

Q: How did you research the novel, and did you learn anything that especially surprised you?

 

A: I guess you could say I had been researching the novel all my life. I went back twice more to Haworth, the second time decades later and the third time about seven years ago. I walked around the parsonage where they had lived and of course I bought many books.

 

What surprised me? I was struck with how ordinary they were outside of happening to write phenomenal novels. I found out that Charlotte had no talent or patience for cooking or housework, whereas Emily excelled at both. Some people at the time claimed Emily made the best bread in the village.

 

I also did not know that Charlotte was so uneasy in fine company after she wrote Jane Eyre. After years of being “little and obscure,” miserable in her work as a teacher or governess, she did not know how to be lionized. She was pretty much an overnight success.

Q: What would you say are some of the most common perceptions and misconceptions about the Brontë sisters?

 

A: It’s hard to really see people, the humanity of them, when their image looms so huge.

 

I think we make quick assessments of famous people: Emily was this wispy mystical creature. Well, she was, but she also cooked the dinners and divine desserts, was an excellent pianist who gave lessons, and invested the small savings of her sisters.

 

I was amazed at how brave Charlotte was. She was this tiny woman (way under five feet) and she had the strength to keep writing until she made the money to stabilize the finances of her little family.

 

And Anne I think was this quiet, steadfast force that held much in the family together.

 

Q: The author Cathy Marie Buchanan said of the book, “With The Man in the Stone Cottage, Stephanie Cowell asks what is real and what is imagined and then masterfully guides her readers on a journey of deciding for themselves.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: I think it’s excellent. The shepherd who Emily finds in the stone cottage on the moors is in one way a very solid fellow, and yet no one but she has ever seen him. Was he entirely…well, REAL? He just appeared in the book when I was writing.

 

I think every reader has to decide for themselves indeed, as Cathy said. Some readers talk a lot about this character and some concentrate on the sections of the three sisters’ growth as writers and Charlotte’s hurtful loves.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I have several half-written novels, or novels in complete drafts, that don’t quite work well enough yet. So, I am not sure what will come next. They range from ancient Alexandria to England 1910.

 

I am many years overdue on the last book of a trilogy on an Elizabethan physician and priest. My house is full of research books. I believe I just sent for one which I already owned.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: I am so thrilled to have The Man in the Stone Cottage out in the world. I have had a bunch of wonderful reviews so far, and I hope it continues to find people who love it. It is a real joy to see it through other people’s eyes. Thanks very much for hosting me on this blog!

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Stephanie Cowell.