Q&A with Claudia Gray

 

Photo by Stephanie Knapp

 

 

Claudia Gray is the author of the new novel The Perils of Lady Catherine de Bourgh. It's the third in her Mr. Darcy and Miss Tilney Mystery series, featuring characters from Jane Austen's classic novels. Claudia Gray is the pseudonym of Amy Vincent. She lives in New Orleans.

 

Q: Why did you decide to focus on Lady Catherine de Bourgh in your latest Mr. Darcy and Miss Tilney mystery?

 

A: The great fun of this series lies in delving into Jane Austen's characters--not just her leads, but her incredible supporting characters too. Lady Catherine is of course one of Austen's most memorable creations, and I realized the entire world of Rosings Park would make a wonderful setting. 

 

Q: The Collins family is a big part of this novel--how did you come up with the idea for their family dynamics?

 

A: Surely we have all wondered how Charlotte Lucas' decision to marry Mr. Collins worked out in the long term.

 

Charlotte is a pragmatist--not romantic, as she tells Lizzie--and Mr. Collins seems legitimately fond of her after their marriage, so I don't think the match would be a total disaster...but while marrying without love might have been a realistic or  reasonable choice in Austen's era, her books strongly caution against marrying without respect. That's what Charlotte has done. That compromise would inevitably exact a price over time. 

 

Q: How would you describe the relationship between Lady Catherine and her daughter, Anne?

 

A: In the original novel, Anne never even gets a word of dialogue! Elizabeth finds Anne aloof and snobbish, but it has always seemed to me that it would be hard to know anything much about Anne at all, given that she spends her entire life utterly dominated by her mother.

 

And other readers and academics have pointed out that, for all Lady Catherine's imperiousness, there is a tender side to her fixation on a potential marriage between Anne and Mr. Darcy--Anne's health does not permit her to seek a husband in the usual way, so Lady Catherine may well have seen Darcy as the only possible source of her daughter's future comfort and security.

 

In other words, I believe there is real love there...but that Anne must at times long for escape. 

 

Q: How would you compare writing these Jane Austen-based mysteries to your work on another icon, the Star Wars series?

 

A: More similar than you'd think, in some ways!

 

In both cases, I'm working with another creator's worldbuilding and often their characters. It requires a lot of attention to the source and a lot of thought about how to extrapolate from canon into a new story that will feel like an authentic continuation.

 

With Star Wars, I have Lucasfilm to help me; with Austen, I have to rely on actual historical sources for some detail--and the oddest things can sometimes be very hard to find! But I have more freedom with the Austen mysteries, and the voice is tremendous fun to write in. 

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: We just moved, so most of my day is currently spent on, like, finding the towels. 

 

But later on this year, I'll be working on a continuation of The Watsons, an unfinished novel fragment Austen apparently left off writing in 1804. When I read it, to me it seemed clear this was still a draft--not a very first draft, but hardly final--but Austen had created some wonderful character sketches and one of my favorite ballroom scenes in her entire canon. I felt like more people needed to see this, and now hopefully they will. 

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: Book four of the Mr. Darcy and Miss Tilney mysteries is written and edited, and should come out in May or June of 2025. As for a potential books 5 and 6--I have some ideas I think readers will love, so let's keep our fingers crossed for those to happen...

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Claudia Gray.