Janice Hadlow is the author of the new novel Rules of the Heart. Her other books include The Other Bennet Sister. She spent most of her career as a television producer and commissioner.
Q: Why did you decide to write a novel based on the life of Lady Harriet Bessborough (1761-1821)?
A: Harriet’s story - inspired by real events - is so extraordinary, so compelling and so unfamiliar that I wanted to bring it to as many readers as possible.
It’s very much not the usual C18th romance - its heroine is no innocent young girl seeking the right man to marry, but an experienced older woman, buffeted by the world, but still hoping against hope to find love.
Harriet is unhappily married, the veteran of several affairs, and knows all there is to know about the many ways in which men can and will disappoint you - and yet she still hopes to find the lover she believes will complete her.
When she meets Granville Leveson Gower, she thinks she’s found him. During their long affair, she endures a great deal in the name of love - but she never loses the generosity of spirit, the open-hearted warmth and the yearning for affection that were central to her character.
With all her complexities, I found Harriet a deeply sympathetic woman, struggling against all the odds for a connection that would give meaning to her life.
Q: How would you describe the relationship between Harriet and Granville?
A: From the very beginning, it’s an intensely passionate connection, founded on a powerful mutual attraction. Granville is very candid about the strength of his desire for Harriet - and once she surrenders to him, it’s clear she fully returns his ardour, that she’s never before experienced anything so exciting.
But the physical pleasure they enjoy together is only part of what draws Harriet to Granville. He satisfies a need in her to belong utterly to one person and she’s soon entirely in thrall to him.
She knows they can never marry - but she’ll do almost anything to keep him near her. She realises she’s become obsessively devoted to this man- but can’t imagine life without him.
Q: How did you research Harriet’s life and what did you learn that especially surprised you?
A: Like most educated women of her time, Harriet was a prolific letter writer, and I discovered a great deal about her from reading her correspondence.
Her character - her wit, her intelligence, her courage - blazes out from everything she wrote, and I was soon captivated by her. She describes her situation with an immediacy and candour that brings her world alive and reveal it to be not quite the place we think it was.
I was most surprised to discover how common it was, in the wealthy circles in which Harriet moved, for older women to have much younger lovers. She’s 12 years older than Granville, and many of her friends also had relationships involving similar differences in age.
I hadn’t appreciated the extent to which, amongst high society, older women were acknowledged to possess a sexual allure all of their own, and were avidly pursued by much younger men.
Q: The author Stephanie Butland said of Rules of the Heart, “Janice Hadlow has created a character who I loved and was frustrated by in equal measure. Harriet’s desire for love is so human and the world she loves in almost impossible for women to traverse unless they give up any hope for their own happiness.” What do you think of this assessment?
A: I absolutely agree with her judgement - Harriet is indeed both extremely lovable and sometimes very frustrating! There are times when you long for her to behave differently, when it’s hard not to wonder if she’s sacrificed too much of herself to preserve her relationship with Granville.
Harriet herself was very aware of the price she paid for his love - she often berates herself for giving in to him as she does, understanding only too well the true costs of her submission.
But, as Stephanie observes, the time in which she lived offered her few other choices than submission or separation and I wanted to present her as she really was, not as we might have wished her to be. I think it’s important to understand how even a woman as intelligent as Harriet was shaped by the ideas and expectations of her world.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’m writing a successor to my first novel, The Other Bennet Sister, which is again set in an Austen-adjacent world.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: I’m delighted that The Other Bennet Sister is currently in production as a television drama for the BBC in the UK and Britbox in the US. It will probably appear sometime in 2026. So exciting!
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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