January/February 2021 Articles about Bronte’s Mistress

My debut novel, Bronte’s Mistress, tells the story of Lydia Robinson, the older woman rumoured to have had an affair with Branwell Bronte. The book was published back in 2020 by Atria Books, and, as we’ve entered a new year, I’m switching to a bimonthly roundup of the latest and greatest press coverage. 

January saw still more end of year summaries, like those I shared in my December post. Austenprose named Bronte’s Mistress the #2 historical novel of the year. This great article also highlighted other novels I’m reviewed and recommended on this blog—Gill Hornby’s Miss Austen, Janice Hadlow’s The Other Bennet Sister, Kathleen Flynn’s The Jane Austen Project, and Natalie Jenner’s The Jane Austen Society—along with Martha Waters’s To Have and To Hoax, which I very much enjoyed, and so many other books that I have to add to my “to read” list.

Courtney of Courtney Reads Romance shared highlights of the 764 (!) books she read last year, and ranked Bronte’s Mistress at #17. And Bronte’s Mistress WON the historical fiction category in the 2020 Bookish Jazz Awards, thanks to reader votes!

Meanwhile, with Valentine’s season upon us, I cautioned bookworms to count themselves lucky they don’t live in the times of Bridgerton, in this piece I penned for Women Writers, Women[’s] Books.

Bronte’s Mistress made it into LitHub for a second time with coverage of my interview for the New Books Network Podcast (check out my own essay for the publication on the links between this Bronte scandal and Charles Webb’s The Graduate here). And Booklist looked back on books including mine, which were written by women authors and appeared in 2020—the centenary year of the Nineteenth Amendment.

Thank you all for the continued love and support! I’ll be back with another instalment of this series in May, summarising March and April coverage.

If you’d like me to speak to your book club about Bronte’s Mistress, please get in touch. You can DM me on Instagram, message me on Facebook, or tweet @SVictorianist. And don’t forget to sign up for my monthly email newsletter below. 

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August Articles by Finola Austin, Author of Bronte’s Mistress

Wow. August was such a month that we’re now midway through September and I still haven’t recovered! Thank you so much to those of you who made the release of Bronte’s Mistress so special. Haven’t ordered your copy yet? There’s a list of places you can buy the book here (please note, for those of you in the UK, Waterstones is your best bet for speedy delivery…thanks, Covid). 

I’ve previously run roundups of the February/March, April/May, June/July articles featuring Bronte’s Mistress. But in August so much happened that I’m divvying up the content into three posts. In this first, I’ll list the articles I wrote that were published during release month. In the second, I’ll share the Q&As and interviews I did, which included some great questions! And, in a third blog post, I’ll detail some of the wonderful articles and reviews penned by others.

So, without further ado, let’s get into it.

The article I was most proud of getting published last month was a piece for Women Writers, Women[‘s] Books on “How Writing My First Novel Prepared Me To Write My Debut Novel.” While the release of my first book was a huge moment of celebration, I’ve been rejected many times along my writing journey. I was so pleased with the positive response I received when I shared this story with others. If you’re a writer who’s aiming for publication, know that it does happen. You don’t need connections. You can get an agent from cold querying. You can pick yourself up and write another book.

I was also pleased to have two of my articles land in MAJOR publications. I wrote an essay, “Was The Graduate Inspired by a Bronte Family Scandal?” for LitHub (one of my favourite websites), following the death of Charles Webb, author of The Graduate. And I wrote about the inspiration for my book for Oprah Magazine (!) in “This New Novel Explores the Secret Lives of the Other Two Bronte Siblings.”

I also courted controversy in a piece for Frolic on “What I Learned Writing About One Of History’s ‘Bad Feminists’.” I talked Bronte scandal with Historia Mag in “The Bronte Affair: researching the scandal that enveloped literature’s most famous family.” And I shared “6 Tender Stories of Forbidden Love” with Off the Shelf, showcasing some of my favourite reads when it comes to taboo romance.

I was also a guest blogger for three of my favourite blogs as part of the Bronte’s Mistress Blog Tour. I shared “10 fascinating facts I learned about the Brontes while researching Bronte's Mistress” with Bronte Blog (home of all things Brontes online). And, while we can’t travel right now, I gave readers a glimpse into my research trip to Yorkshire in “The Villages of Great and Little Ouseburn—the Forgotten Stops on the Bronte Trail,” for English Historical Fiction Writers. Finally, I was a guest for a day on the Silver Petticoat Review, writing a piece on “The Brontes and the Victorian Mrs Robinson.”

Writing and publishing these personal essays has been hard work, but it’s also been very rewarding. With each one, I’ve considered something new about Bronte’s Mistress and what my novel means to me. I dreamed of writing pieces like this when my novel existed only in my head. Thank you all for reading them!

Do you have a book club that would love to read Bronte’s Mistress? If so, I’d love to join your meeting via Zoom! Download the Bronte’s Mistress reading group guide and contact me via my website. Alternatively, get in touch via Facebook or Instagram or by tweeting @SVictorianist.