The story of The Time Baroness by Georgina Young-Ellis.
I became inspired to write The Time Baroness simply based on the fact that I’d read all of Jane Austen’s novels so many times. Enjoying her books as I did, I started to wonder: if I could time-travel back to that era, what would it be like for me? How would a modern woman manage to fit in? My main character Cassandra became my representative, going from 100 years in the future to 1820s England, exploring it in a way no person of our time can do. This must be the reason The Time Baroness manages to always hover around #1 in British travel books on Amazon, because though it’s not really a travel book, it takes the reader to County Hampshire in southern England during the Regency Era, as well as Bath, Lyme Regis and London.
Beyond reading all of the 19th century English literature I could get my hands on, I researched for The Time Baroness by reading biographies of my favorite authors from that period and trolling endless websites describing clothing, food, manners, etc. of the era. Nevertheless, I purposely have Cassandra making mistakes in her dress, speech and behavior because prepare as she might have for the trip, there are some things she will inevitably get wrong. So this is the basis of The Time Baroness: how this woman of the future manages to integrate herself into 1820 England, how the people she meets impact her in a way she never imagined, including romantically, and how quickly things can take a turn for the worse, plunging her into dangerous situations.
I had so much fun writing The Time Baroness that I began to think about other places Cassandra could visit once she returned from her Regency England adventure. As a resident of New York City, and a person fascinated with the history of abolition and the Underground Railroad, I decided to set the next book in Pre-Civil War New York. The working title for that nearly completed work is The Time Goddess, (though I’m also tossing around the idea of calling it The Time Heiress so watch for either of those titles). Inspired by Cassandra’s exploration of 1820’s England and 1850’s NYC, I decided that these books will become part of a series which will ultimately take the reader to Renaissance Italy, Shakespearean England and finally to 1950’s USA.
You can probably see from the settings of my present and future books that there are two countries that I especially love to travel in: England and Italy. I’m a person that really likes to immerse myself in the places I visit, and rather than hurry around to various tourist attractions, my family and I usually rent a car and drive through rural areas, staying at B and B’s and getting to know the countryside and small towns. I feel I get to know places better this way, a useful thing for a writer.
Thanks for the chance to share my process and thoughts on travel, even my imaginary travels into the distant past. I hope readers will join me there in The Time Baroness and future works.
Georgina Young-Ellis
