WRITING AN EPIC WESTERN
IN THE HEART OF JANE AUSTEN COUNTRY
(& A BIT OF BENNET WITH TWO 'T''s FAMILY HISTORY)
AI images courtesy of Magic Studio
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Unless you’ve been living under a rock all your life, you’ll know who Jane Austen was. She lived, wrote her novels, and died in Hampshire during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. She scratched away with quill and ink in her modest but cosy parlour in Chawton Village until her death in Winchester in 1817.
I live in Alton, a historic market town a twenty-minute cycle ride from Chawton, and I’ve visited her former home, Chawton Cottage. I stood in the parlour where, according to legend, a squeaky floorboard warned her of approaching footsteps so she could hurriedly hide her writing.
Really? Why?
I used to roll my eyes at that… until I remembered my own secretive scribblings of a blood and lust western trilogy starring a devastating, bisexual, fastest gun slinging cowgirl. Not exactly Austen territory. If that isn’t about as far removed from Jane's stories as it’s possible to get, I don’t know what is.
I, too, could have used a warning floorboard.
I didn’t want anyone knowing the details—until my husband turned up in my late twenties and said, “Write that damn story, for goodness sake!” So I did, and published Alias Jeannie Delaney Books 1 & 2 on Amazon under my pen name Kit Mackenzie. My other name, as a wild western English gal, is Kitty Le Roy, and this is my frontier cabin in my back garden. So I'm indeed all wild west, much to most folks' bemusement.
KITTY'S FRONTIER CABIN
Jane Austen’s novels largely concern middle-class families marrying off their daughters, and the social commentary therein. My trilogy is the life story of a pants-wearing, badass cowgirl, the fastest gun in the West, bisexual, and fighting to survive on the frontier. Mine is extraordinarily niche. (You can read the full blurb below.)*
But back to Chawton Cottage...
When I wandered into Jane’s bedroom, I was less fascinated by her writing desk or the samplers on the walls than by the fact that her chamber pot — tucked away in a small closet — would still contain her DNA.
I’m no Austen devotee. More on that later.
Two centuries after her death, long after her novels made fortunes and leapt from page to screen, I can be found half a mile away, editing Book Three of Alias Jeannie Delaney on my laptop.
As a teenager in the 1960s, I slogged through Pride and Prejudice for my O Levels, along with William Golding's Lord of the Flies. I was not delighted. I liked English Language and invariably came first or second in my form, but flunked English Lit spectacularly. Austen’s wit may be legendary, but to me the story dragged like a sermon on root vegetables. Only Charles Dance’s Mr Bennet has ever softened my stance. I appreciate that Jane was a great wit and enjoyed poking fun at her characters, but I found the novel about as thrilling as a sermon on root vegetables. I grew impatient with the people inhabiting it. Yes, I know—eighteenth-century context, twenty-first-century eyes, stroppy teenage reader. I’m a stroppy granny now. That said, having later watched Charles Dance as Mr Bennet, I did develop a fondness for the poor man. Had the film been available back then, during my exams, I might actually have tolerated the story and stood a chance of passing the exam. My daughter, studying Sense and Sensibility in the 1990s, was lent the video by her grandma. I would have given my right arm to be able to watch it. I doubt Pride and Prejudice and Zombies would have helped either—though I did enjoy that film, and yes, it exists. I might even have passed if that version had been on the syllabus.
Whatever. I really don’t care now.
Now, about Jane's Bennets — my namesakes with the extra 't'. ..
One of my umpteen interests is family history. My great-great-grandfather James Bennett lived in Selborne, Hampshire (as my dad liked to say, “You’ve returned to your Hampshire roots”). James was a well-known cricketer in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. His cousin John Bennett of Kingsley was even better known.
They played for Middlesex and at Marylebone in 1805, and their names appear regularly in the sports periodicals of the time. What intrigues me is that James Bennett appears in the 1841 census listed as a farmer—plummeting from minor celebrity to farm worker.
Interesting, yes—but what does this have to do with Jane?
Jane was keen on cricket. A television film from a few years ago, Becoming Jane, shows her playing cricket in the garden. This piqued my interest. The surname Bennet and her fondness for cricket. A quick Google of “Jane Austen” and “cricket” led me to a website run by a cricket enthusiast known as Fantasy Bob, (dodgy name) under the subtitle Witterings.
According to Bob, Jane was influenced by the cricketing Bennetts. I’ve never substantiated this—but the timing is right. The Bennett cousins played at Hambledon Cricket Club in Hampshire when Jane was around and where the rules of cricket were established. It’s entirely possible that Jane encountered their exploits and—deliberately or accidentally—borrowed the name, dropping the second ‘t’.
“Don’t believe everything you read,” they say—especially on blogs. I agree completely. But it’s a cracking story, and I’m sticking with it. Don’t spoil a good tale with facts. What a thought—that my ancestor James, and his cousin John, were Jane Austen’s heroes. And what a story it would be if I could prove it.
Many of Alton’s roads are named after Austen characters and locations. Our cul-de-sac is Bennet Close, just off Netherfields. When we moved here, people said we were “coming home” because of my surname. Perhaps they didn’t realise how close to the truth they might have been.
So, to sum up: here we have two writers—Jane and me—living two centuries and half a mile apart, writing two radically different visions of womanhood. One with embroidery hoops and marriage plots. The other with guns, grit, and a bisexual cowgirl riding hard into the sunset.
I couldn't find a more compelling story if I tried.
Alias Jeannie Delaney Books 1 & 2 are available
as e-novel & paperback & on Kindle Unlimited.
IF YOU'VE READ & ENJOYED THE TRILOGY SO FAR,
I'D BE INCREDIBLY GRATEFUL IF YOU COULD LEAVE A POSITIVE REVIEW ON AMAZON.
THANK YOU SO MUCH!
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The Extraordinary Tourist - TET Life -
New Book Alias Jeannie Delaney - Book 1 - Go West, Girl!
The Extraordinary Tourist - TET Life -
New Book Alias Jeannie Delaney - Book 2 - The Outlaw's Return
Western Alias Jeannie Delaney - Book 1 - Go West, Girl!
Western Alias Jeannie Delaney Book 2 - The Outlaw's Return
https://www.thefestivalofstorytellers.com/main-stage/author-of-the-hour-russell-j-rucker/ https://www.amazon.co.uk/West-Girl-Alias-Jeannie-Delaney-ebook/dp/B0C9YT6DVR
ALIAS JEANNIE DELANEY - THE STORYLINE
Badass pants-wearing tomboy beauty Jeannie Morgan grows to be a cowgirl & the fastest gun west of the Mississippi. But when she discovers that her sexuality is as fluid as a miner's whiskey & both men & women enjoy her magnificent lovemaking, she feels as though she's been trampled by a cattle stampede.
She's born in vibrant New Orleans in 1865 and strongly rebels against the upbringing of a Victorian girl. The family head west where she finds her true calling on her Pa's ranch. However, the explosive mix of her looks, her charismatic power, her lethal gun & finally her sexuality go against her & the townsfolk want her out or dead. Preferably dead.
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