Hello again, dear readers! This year, we’ve begun a blog series highlighting Austen-lovers around the world—sharing how they first discovered Austen’s fiction, why they love Austen, how they’ve contributed to the Janeite community, you get the picture. Fans, who cultivate and engage in discourse surrounding Austen’s life and fiction, participate in workshops and conventions, host book clubs, and don I ❤️ Darcy merchandise with pride (but hopefully not prejudice—wink, wink), are the reason Jane’s spirit survives in the twenty-first century. We deserve a shout-out! And we deserve the chance to connect with like-minded individuals across the world. This time, we’re highlighting Alice McVeigh, award-winning author of multiple Austen-adjacent titles for adult readers.
When I first met Alice McVeigh, I thought to myself that she was perhaps the very woman Jane Austen might have been if she’d lived in the twenty-first century. This is high praise, indeed, but I assure you it is deserved. Her lovely eyes and kind smile, paired with the lilting British accent that almost completely obscures her American heritage, are rivaled only by her conversational wit and charm. Having lived in seven countries (and visited forty-four) during her lifetime, she is highly cultured, well-mannered, and well-spoken—talents which characterize her successful career as an Austen-adjacent novelist.
Thus far, Alice’s Austen-adjacent titles have included the novels Susan, Harriet, and Darcy, and her most recent work, Pride and Perjury—a short story collection that hit bookstores in May. But while Alice never doubted her vocation as a writer, it took time, effort, and a great deal of courage to become the award-winning novelist she is today.
Born in Seoul, South Korea to a United States ambassador, Alice’s childhood was far from ordinary. By the time she was a teenager, her family had moved back to America, and Alice found herself miserably bored and unhappy in public high school. To entertain herself, she began to read classic literature: Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, the Brontë sisters, and of course, Jane Austen.
As Alice matured into her twenties, she found herself torn between following her dreams of becoming a professional writer and a professional cellist. Although she had been writing novels since age thirteen, her family did not support her authorial ambitions. Alice moved to Britain soon after achieving a Bachelor of Music in cello performance to study with her musical idol, the late Jacqueline du Pré, who is still widely renowned as one of the greatest cellists of all time.
And it was there in Britain that Alice truly fell in love—first with her husband, whom she met and wedded in a whirlwind of Austenian proportions, and then with Jane Austen’s work.
Living in Kent—so close in proximity to Chawton and other Austenian locations—opened Alice’s eyes to the extraordinary qualities of Austen’s fiction. “I suddenly understood what she was on about!” Alice laughs. She asked her in-laws for a lifetime Jane Austen Society membership for her twenty-second birthday and never looked back.
Still, Alice continued her career as a musician, traveling to four continents with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the BBC Symphony. It wasn’t until her thirties that she decided to pursue her dreams of becoming a professional writer. She began querying in London and within a month had secured an offer from a “mega-famous” agent who accepted her for a three-book contract with Hachette/Orion, one of the “big-five” publishing powers of the modern world.
“Always inside I was a writer,” Alice asserts, “and I think that with a little more support from my father, who was also a writer—a famous biographer—I would have done it sooner. He was supportive of my music, but fiction… not so much!”
After publishing a few books of literary fiction, as well as a science fiction novel that she released under a pseudonym, she came to her agent one day and declared, “What I really want is to write like Jane Austen.”
“Well, no one can write like Jane Austen,” her agent said.
Four Austen-inspired books later, no author has received so many reviews praising the likeness of their narrative voice and style to Austen’s. As a musician, Alice is attuned to the rhythm and style of Austen’s language, listening to the prose as if she’s “hearing it in [her] ear” like music. The critics certainly seem to agree: “McVeigh's prose and plotting are pitch-perfect—she echoes the master herself,” writes Publishers Weekly. “McVeigh displays a brilliant, spot-on command of Austen's diction and tone,” seconds Kirkus Reviews.
Alice’s first novel Susan: A Jane Austen Prequel imagines a young Lady Susan “before she was corrupted by the big lights of London,” flirting (i.e. toying) with men, including Frank Churchill (from Emma). Harriet: A Jane Austen Variation sidelines Emma herself in favor of the musically-inclined Jane Fairfax and a Harriet Smith “clever enough to pretend to be foolish.” Meanwhile, Darcy: a Pride and Prejudice Variation, which was recently honored in the UK “Selfies” Book Awards at the 2024 London Book Fair, shines a light on Mary Bennet’s complex interiorities and expands upon Mr. Darcy’s background. Finally, Pride and Perjury fills the holes Austen left open in twelve short stories inspired by Pride and Prejudice and Emma.
“Everything I write is a tribute to [Jane Austen],” Alice says. “And my greatest dream is that when I die, I meet her and she goes, ‘Yeah, you were good.’”
Looking forward, Alice plans to continue making her yearly pilgrimage to Winchester Cathedral to lay flowers on Jane’s grave. “And I’ll tell you something that moves me: they’re not the only flowers there,” she says, tears welling at the corners of her eyes. “Every single time I go, someone has already put flowers there. She is so loved.”
This author, for one, could not agree more.
Excerpted from Zoom interview with Alice McVeigh, March 19, 2024.
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Would love to read your biography Alice, what a fascinating life you’ve led!