Guest posts

Janet often writes for guest blog posts for blogs or websites. Read more below:

English History Authors blog: Literary Genius in the ‘Long Eighteenth’ Century

Over many decades I have been a biographer and literary-historical critic of the long eighteenth century. Some of my earliest work helped to promote women writers who, at that time, were largely obscure, writers such as Mary Wollstonecraft, Charlotte Smith, Mary Hays, Frances Sheridan – and indeed Mary Shelley, who was not always known even as the creator of Frankenstein, let alone of her other historical novels.

Read more

 

 

 


Jane Odiwe – Books Inspired by Austin

I’m so thrilled and honoured to have Janet Todd on the blog today to delight us with an excerpt from her new novel, A Man of Genius. I’ve long been an admirer of Janet’s non-fiction books on Jane Austen, though she’s also known for her feminist works on Mary Wollstonecraft and Aphra Benn.

Read more

 

 

 


The Mitford Society – Janet Todd on historical Italy and A Man of Genius

I began my novel with this invented passage because I wanted to introduce my main character, Ann, through what was in her head: the kind of work she wrote and read. She’d been writing Gothic novels for many years and her own and other people’s plots had filled her imagination from childhood to the present day (the early 1820s). Yet, when faced with a Gothic world of torment and pursuit she was as bewildered as anyone else would have been—and as any of the heroines of the novels she read and invented.

Read more

 

 


A Man of Genius and The Campari Spritz


A Man of Genius
 is a psychological and historical mystery and nothing is ever quite what it seems at first, either in London, where the story begins and ends, or in Venice, where relationships and minds unravel.  Both cities are full of spies and surveillance: identities and memories become insecure and troubling.

Read more