Writing Jane Austen Read Free

we’re talking about in this office today. Not your sister, your dearest friend, your mother—oh, you don’t have a mother, I forgot—and not that crazy would-be scientist you live with.”
    Not for the first time, Georgina wondered whether Livia’s mental state was hovering on the danger zone.
    “I don’t live with Henry; at least I do, I live in his house, but I don’t live with him in the sense—”
    “You seriously think I’m interested in your sex life or lack of it? I don’t care if he’s your masseur, your analyst or an in vitro sibling with whom you are having an incestuous relationship. You don’t discuss this with him, get it? Nor with anyone else.”
    Georgina picked up the pen and dragged her chair closer to the desk. “I really think I ought to read it. And that you ought to tell me what this is all about before I sign anything.”
    Livia picked up her half-glasses and perched them on her beaky nose. So would a vulture look after a trip to the optician. “Sign.”
    Georgina signed.
    “Your publishers, your former publishers, have a manuscript. A nineteenth-century manuscript, written by a major author. Very major.”
    Georgina waited. “That’s exciting,” she ventured.
    “In her handwriting.”
    What kind of a book? A journal? A novel? “Do you mean the manuscript of an existing book?”
    “Don’t be stupid. That would be worth money, but what would it have to do with you? No. An unknown work.”
    Despite herself, Georgina was intrigued. “Where has it come from? Did they buy it?”
    “Buy it? Why would they do that? They found it. Building works, some bricked-up cupboard, reams of dross, nothing’s changed in publishing for the last two centuries. Amidst the rubbish, some pages of gold. Pure gold.”
    “Pages? How many pages?”
    “Eighteen or nineteen. Chapter One.”
    Chapter One? A soul mate, this writer; another novelist specializing in Chapter Ones, by the sound of it. “And where do I come into it?” Georgina had been holding her breath, and now she took a gulp of air which rushed into her lungs and hit back in the shape of a desperate hiccup.
    “Have you been drinking?”
    “No,” Georgina said, her eyes watering. “A glass of water—”
    “What do you think this is, a café? You come into it because Dan Vesey, director of Cadell and Davies, thinks that you are the person to finish the book.”
    “Finish the book?”
    “Cut the echoes. You heard. It works. It has synergy. Cadell and Davies dropped a bundle on
Magdalene Crib,
all those American returns did nothing for their bottom line. You do Victorian, you can write nineteenth-century. It’s going to be huge, ultra huge. He gets his money back, you get a second chance.”
    Silence. Georgina sat waiting for what Livia would say next, but she said nothing.
    Georgina swallowed hard. “You said a major author. Just how major? I mean, if we’re talking, say, one of the Brontë sisters, someone like that, I’m absolutely sure—”
    “It’s not a Brontë.”
    “I’m not the right person for this, I don’t think I could write a book in someone else’s voice.”
    “Don’t give me that voice stuff. Since you aren’t writing anything, and since what you think you want to write is past its sell-by,you’d better jump at this, and jump quick. Tight deadline, Dan wants a finished book on his desk when he announces the find to the world. It’ll be headlines from here to Sydney, and that way there’s no chance of anyone else muscling in. He’ll sell the manuscript pages to a collector or a museum for megabucks, but at that point, he won’t have control. So he wants a book, written by a reputable, respected author—you—picking up the story at the end of Chapter One, on its way to the presses, before he goes public. He gets publicity for the discovery, he gets sales for the book. Even you can get the point of that, am I right?”
    “My new book’s shaping up well. It might not be good for my career