Nancy Clarke: Hello everybody, and big welcome. I'm Nancy Clarke and I've just finished my term as a member of the Committee of the Friends of the National Library. A new committee has just been elected and I know it'll continue to provide a wonderful program for you, the Friends.  

First, I'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land we're meeting on the Ngunnawal and the Ngambri people. I recognise their continuing connection to land, water, and culture, and I pay my respects to their elders past, present, and emerging. Some of you, quite a lot of you are joining us online from other places, and I extend that respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the places where you are.  

Now once again, a very warm welcome to what we know is going to be a terrific evening. We’re really so pleased to have so many of you attending in the theatre and online. But I need to do that ugly and boring warning. Could you just please check that your phones are off or on silent? Thank you. We heard that.  

We are here for the craft of historical fiction. Historical fiction is a writing genre that attracts a huge readership. As we can see, it can be scholarly, escapist, reflective, witty, and much more. Tonight we've got an opportunity to explore some aspects of this genre with 3 experts. Two are practitioners, writers. Both have published widely in other genre as well, but it's their historical novels we're concentrating on. They're over there.  

Alison Goodman, Alison, Alison Goodman's 2 ‘'Ill-Mannered Ladies' novels have had huge success. Set in the Regency period in England, they’re fast-paced, witty, and dynamic with gothic overtones. Heroines, Lady Augusta, Gus, and her sister Julia, race from one implausible adventure to the next, along the way, addressing issues very topical today, including domestic violence and sexual and social exploitation. It's great news that the most recent, ‘The Lady’s Road Guide to Utter Ruin’ has just been announced on the nomination list for the Dublin Literary Award for 2026.  

Sue. Thank you. Sue Williams's 3 Australian novels set in the very early days of English settlement in New South Wales focused on historical figures often overlooked. The wife, the daughter, the mistress, with the men traditionally portrayed as significant in our colonial history. Many of us already knew about or something of Elizabeth MacArthur, the clever wife of land owner and bully John MacArthur. But it's thanks to Sue that we now know also Elizabeth Macquarie, Mary Bligh, Ann Inett, and Anna Josepha King, along with other early colonial women and we’re the better for it.  

Different in mode and setting though these 2 series of books are, Alison and Sue are both meticulous researchers, which is I'm sure is significant for our moderator, Professor Kate Mitchell. Thanks Kate. Director of the Research School of Humanities and the Arts and Professor of Literary Studies at the ANU. Kate's particularly interested in historical fiction along with the ethics and the creative possibilities involved in fictionalising past lives and events. Absolutely spot on for this evening. Thanks Kate.  

Now practicalities, Kate will lead the conversation with Alison and Sue for about 35 minutes. Then we have a little surprise, and then some, some time for questions.  

Now, if you’re attending online and you would like to ask a question, please type them into the comments bar on the screen and press submit. We'll pass them onto the speakers for their response if time permits.  

After we've done all of that, there'll be an opportunity for you to have your copies of Alison and Sue's books signed upstairs in the foyer. The bookshop is staying open until 7:30.  

Over to you, Kate. Thank you.

Kate Mitchell: Thank you Nancy. And thank you for inviting me to come and share a conversation with these wonderful authors beside me here. It's really exciting to be here and to get to learn more about the way you've approached writing about the past.  

And I thought it might be nice because you're both actually quite prolific writers and have written across a range of different genres from fantasy and young adult fiction to true crime biography. And I was wondering a little bit about what drew you to historical fiction, to the past, for your most recent novels.

Sue Williams: Well, I guess I've always written nonfiction, but then during COVID I kind of thought it'd be nice to write something completely and utterly different, something a bit more challenging. And I kept thinking nonfiction, you end up doing so much research, you're working with living people and it can be really difficult sometimes to say exactly what they're like when they really don't want anybody else to know. It becomes a real juggling act because obviously you, you don't wanna make books a hagiography if you're writing a biography. You kind of have to have the, the stuff, the skeletons in the cupboard as well. And sometimes that doesn't go down too well.  

Kate Mitchell: We're all thinking about who as she written about again?

Sue Williams: Well, all the skeletons are there to be, you know, seen really. So I kind of thought fiction must be so much easier. Famous last words. And I've always loved historical fiction, Philippa Gregory, Hillary Mantel, and I thought, how hard can it possibly be? And now I know it is so hard. And the first book, ‘Elizabeth and Elizabeth’ about MacArthur and Macquarie ended up taking me 5 years, whereas normally a book might take 6 months. Yeah, so I found it absolutely horrific and I thought, I'm never ever going to write another one of those again. But then it did really well and the publisher said we'd like another one and then another one.  

And now I'm absolutely in love with it because it was wonderful delving back into the past. I mean, we both loved doing research and discovering what people's lives were like then. Especially the women because they were usually overshadowed by the men because the men had the positions of power. And often the men wrote the history books as well, so they kind of, they didn't really take much notice of the women. So it was just lovely to bring these women out into the light. And you get absolutely lost in that time period. And it, it's just a really fabulous feeling to be there and to be kind of watching your characters working together. And obviously it's a very foreign place the past. And it's hard for a 21st century or 20th century woman to appreciate what it was like in the 18th century or 19th century. So it's, there are huge limitations, but it's just a wonderful thing to be able to educate people sometimes and entertain them at the same time. And that's what I love about historical fiction.

Alison Goodman: Well, I think my introduction came when I was about 12 and my mother gave me my first Georgette Heyer book, yes, ‘These Old Shades’. A good introduction, under the sheets with the torch. Just, it was wonderful. And that, that sort of started my love of the 18th century and early 19th century. Definitely read all of Georgette Heyer's oeuvre and then moved on to Jane Austen and Bronte's and all of that, that beautiful literature.  

So when I was writing my own fiction, I started through science fiction and fantasy, which, and not as, as far from historical fiction as you'd think, because they're both very much involved about creating world. And whereas one is maybe a futuristic world, the history is the past world.  

And I was working on a vampire novel. That's right. I was working on a vampire novel and then suddenly this book came out, it was all about sparkly vampires, which was ‘Twilight’. It's got like, alright, never gonna write a vampire novel that's not gonna get published. So I was left with a whole lot of sort of thinking about a book, but without kind of where I was gonna go with it. And I went to the Romance Writers of Australia conference, an excellent conference, a lot of craft-based information. And Jennifer Closter, who's written Georgette Heyer's biography, was doing a session on researching the Regency.  

I'd always thought, because I've come through professional writing degree and I've done my master's in professional writing and, and also my doctorate. So I've always gone through the craft of  the fiction. I'm not a historian, but I'm not, I can't, I don't have the research skills for the, the Regency, which is a beloved era. There are websites devoted, you probably know this, websites devoted to picking holes in Regency novels. So I thought, well this is a very kind of intense research period to do, even though I love it.  

But Jennifer was talking about how there's so many extent resources now available, the online resources are fantastic. And I girded my loins and I decided I would write in that era. And, and that's what started me off into going into first historical fantasy, which is the ‘Lady Helen’ series and then the 'Ill-Mannered Ladies' series.

Kate Mitchell: Actually, you've both just sort of touched on something that I was quite interested in, in terms of what was sort of different in the writing process for you. Was it a different kind of process when you sort of turned to the past for those stories or for the inspiration for the story? You were saying that it's, there are similarities in that world making, you know, similarities between fantasy and historical fiction, but were there differences as well?

Alison Goodman: Hmm. I think, well there, one of the main differences I think is if you are melding in real people and, and real kind of historical figures. And there is a decision I think that historical fiction authors have to make, whether it's conscious or unconscious, it's the level of authenticity and accuracy. And I split those, I split those in, in, in apart from each other. The accuracy being the, the historical facts as we know them or as we have received them and the authenticity of how it feels, what we think that that world would feel like as we walk through it in fiction. And the historical fiction author needs to decide, where am I going to pitch my authenticity and my accuracy? And we've seen with things like ‘’Bridgerton, which is great fun, and you know, it's got a contract immediately with its viewers, which is, we are not gonna be very authentic and we're not gonna be very accurate. But we're gonna have fun. And that's great. They, they pitch it and they tell you. And most historical authors need to make that decision.

Sue Williams: Yeah because, I mean as you'll all know, there's a huge range of historical fiction. It goes from people who are really careful with the facts, but just weave fiction in between the known facts and try and bring them to life and add some flesh and blood and emotion and motivation into the story so that we can empathise with the people, 'cause that's what we really want to do. We wanna draw people into the story. So we fill them and see them as real characters.  

And there are other people at the other end of the spectrum who might be writing about real people, but they'll give them a different name so then they can do anything they want to with that person. They can take a lover, they can have a illegitimate child, they can do anything.  

And it's just a massive range. And I kind of sometimes get a bit frustrated with people at the other end because I'm reading a book and I'm thinking, who is this based on? Why are they doing this now? And then you kind of have to keep going back to try and work out who they're actually talking about. And I find that enormously frustrating. But it's just a massive range because some people would love playing with historical figures and some people will like the truth about those historical figures to remain true.  

We had Kate Grenville who in ‘Room of Leaves’ had Elizabeth MacArthur having a lover. And a lot of people were absolutely outraged to that, me included. And so you kind of, you know, you have to, as you say, pitch where you want to be on that spectrum really. Because people will often come up to you and say, did they really do that? Did they really say that? Well, you have to, you have to know your ground to be able to stand your ground and say, yes, that was perfectly true. Obviously the conversation was made up, but their feelings were absolutely right.

Kate Mitchell: So in terms then of, oh, we've lost the, the slide, but ' The Governor, His Wife and His Mistress ', how did you sort of approach what was in the historical archive and what you obviously needed to add? ‘Cause I imagine that there's a very sort of different amounts of information and different kinds of information perhaps available about, you know, Governor King versus his wife, probably still a bit legitimate, might find a way in and, and the, the convict mistress.  

Sue Williams: Absolutely, well, Philip Gidley King, as we all know, was the third governor of New South Wales. And he was quite exceptional in that he had a mistress and then a wife as well. And that is what drew me to the story. I mean, it's great being able to talk about what Gidley King achieved and what the period was like, 'cause he came over on the First Fleet with Arthur Philip, and he went through enormous trauma along the way.  

But that kind of, that one event really attracted me. I really wanted to find out a lot more about that really. And I kind of really, I mean, the difficulty is you kind of have to have characters who are a bit sympathetic because you want to travel with them through the journey. And Philip Gidley King betraying his mistress so brutally, he could have been a really nasty person, but I decided to choose to make him just a bit hopeless, really a bit hopeless with women. He was a good governor, but it's just, he had no idea with women.

And his convict mistress, where he was on Norfolk Island with her, there were lots of history written about them. And Philip Gidley King was meticulous about writing a journal every single day. But the truth lies somewhere between the lines. Like in one diary entry, he wrote one journal entry, which was being sent to the king all the time. Whenever a ship came by said that a child was born on Norfolk Island and was the first child to be born. He didn't mention it was his child or it was his child with his mistress, or that the child had a really interesting name, Norfolk, really unimaginative.

So you kind of have to then start reading between the lines and trying to work out what has been left out really. And so you've got lots of sources, but sometimes you, we don't really know too much about. We know a little bit about how the mistress and the wife got on. I mean, the mistress. Gidley King went back to England to report on the progress of the colony to the king. And his mistress said, you will come back to me, you know, you've got Norfolk here and I'm having another baby, so you'll have two children. And he said, yes, I'll come back. And of course he did come back two years later, but with a new wife in tow. And you think that's, you know, real Madam Butterfly stuff, really, it's just horrendous. How would that situation have played out? And we know a little bit about how it played out, but putting in the emotion there and the drama is to me what really sort of strikes a chord.

Kate Mitchell: Yeah.

Sue Williams: And hopefully with readers too.

Kate Mitchell: Mm. And your main characters Allison, are made up characters.

Alison Goodman: Yes.

Kate Mitchell: But then throughout the 'Ill-Mannered Ladies' novels, you do have a range of historical people. Beau Brummell becomes a kind of op operative or secret agent figure. I don't think I'm giving anything away too much there. How did you, so Beau Brummell the ladies of, oh, I've picked the wrong one to try to say The Ladies of Fla Golan, the Welsh ladies. Yeah. There's a range of historical figures.  

So did you find that there was a different way that you needed to approach including those, you know, real world historical figures to sort of incorporate them in? Or what kind of, you know, what kind of, how did, what relationship did they have to the rest of, of the story?

Alison Goodman: Of the way that I build the story? Mm. Well, I mean, Gus and Julia are the twin sisters. They're like, they’re 42-year-old spinster twin sisters. And that gives them, and they've got a standing in society, which gives them ability to meet these people. And so when I'm building the historical events around them, I do obviously do due diligence. You know, I research the people that I'm going to include.  

Now the, with Beau Brummell, what I saw was a gap. A gap in the kind of information that I was getting. Whereas there's this man who was so close to the Prince Regent, I thought, well, there's a gap, there's a kind of little space there that I could say, well, would he be feeding information about this very volatile royal to someone who would be interested being the government. So that's where I did deviate from what is known.  

And whenever I do that, I do write an authors note because it's not, it's not there, you know, it's not in the, in the history.  

But when I was creating the ladies of, I think it's pronounced, this is terrible, I'm gonna do it incorrectly. Sorry for the Welsh people in the audience.

Kate Mitchell: Yes, me too.

Alison Goodman: No, it's not gonna happen. There's a lot of.  

Kate Mitchell: I did it.

Alison Goodman: I think it's something like that, an interesting same sex couple. And they, you know, they, their whole kind of way that they lived their life was so kind of interesting for that time. I love that they ran away together first, both dressed as men with a rifle and a dog as you do. Brought back by their families who were quite horrified. And then eventually their devotion to each other won over, to a certain degree, their objections and they move to Wales to live together. So there's a lot of research about that.  

And I do a particular kind of research as well, which I wrote my PhD on, which was going to the place that you're setting your historical fiction and walking the ground. And so that's about feeling that kind of space and working out what kind of opportunities are there for the fiction. So I was doing a lot of that in my research as well. Especially around trying to fit these people into how they, how my heroines were moving around and, and having their adventures.

Kate Mitchell: So they sort of, I mean, one of the things that I think I was thinking about as I was reading is they also sort of anchor your heroines in, in their sort of historical context a bit and sort of pull them into it. Because Gus and Julia do some things that we might find surprising if a lot of what we know about the Regency period is given to us through Jane Austen or Austen adaptations, or even Georgette Heyer. They're sort of, well they're quite independent. How would you describe their?

Alison Goodman: Well, they're kind of, they're using their privilege to help other women in peril. So they're quite, they've got, well, Gus has kind of had it with being, not having no purpose other than going to parties and, and doing all that kinda stuff. And she, she wanted some purpose in life. And, and I think it is quite, it is interesting because the Regency that we're given often is a very clean white regency. And it was appalling. It was an appallingly, unclean, unhygienic, you know, diverse place. And that's the regency that Julia and Gus moved through. And one that was very, very violent.

Kate Mitchell: And we did get sort of, you know, shadows of that around the edges of Austin's novels. I mean, there's dual that kind of happens off stage in ‘Sense and Sensibility’. And I think one of the other things I was thinking about with the women that you've created is that, you know, we can sort of lose touch today, I think with just how shocking Austen's heroines were. That, I mean, Elizabeth, when she rejects Darcy, it's a shocking, you know, and quite irresponsible act, you know, the other way to think about that.  

And so I was thinking with both of your novels, I think it's interesting the way that you've represented the women. Both novels of course are set in the early 19th century and late 18th century, so in a similar time period. Partly in England, partly in Australia or entirely in England.  

I was wondering what sort of role, and I think Sue, you touched on this in what you said at the start, what kind of role historical fiction can play in bringing out these sort of both women's voices, but also maybe fleshing out a picture of what women may have been like then, which might not entirely fit the sort of ideas that we carry around with us all the time.

Sue Williams: Why, I guess it was easier with Australia because many of these women came over as convicts and they had really shocking beginnings. It was really tough. I mean, Ann Inett, the heroine of the governor or the mistress, she stole a dress. She was a seamstress, but she stole a dress. And we think it was probably from a woman who hadn't paid her bill. But she went to court and she wasn't allowed to say anything in her own defence. She was only allowed, she was told afterwards that she was only allowed to put in a written plea. She had no idea, she couldn't write. I mean, you know, these, these women had no rights whatsoever.  

And then you get shoved in prison for 16 months, then you get sent on a, onto a ship, then you spend 8 months on a ship in the First Fleet, or maybe even, God forbid, the Second Fleet, which was horrendous. So I think what I really wanted to bring out very much was how resilient these women were. And yeah, the nice lovely Regency period, I mean, for these women, it was just, hell really, it was just hell on earth.  

And even before that, we've got Elizabeth MacArthur, I mean, who's going out and farming when John keeps being sent back to Britain. I mean, it's not so shocking that she went out farming because her education back in Devon, when she was growing up, she was, her schooling, she was tutored by a vicar. And the schooling also included how to farm because if your brothers or your father or your husband was away, you had to know how to run a farm. So it wasn't so surprising that she did so incredibly well. But I think in the period, in that period of time, I think a lot of us were surprised that she managed so extraordinary. Well, and John was writing all these messages back, saying, do this, but really 6 months, it took 6 months to receive the letter. So by then, the, the issue was, was she'd had to solve it herself, really.  

So there were amazing, incredible women. Mary Bligh, she was the only person when, when the Rum Rebellion happened, we had 300 men marching on government house with their muskets loaded. She was the only one who went out to meet them at the gate. Everybody else stayed in government house. And she went out, a tiny little woman, her husband had just died. She was dressed in mourning black, and she had a parasol. And she tried to strike the men on their chest to send them back. I mean, wow. These women were quite incredible. And yet they've never really received a proper place in history, I think. Yeah. Did that answer the question?

Kate Mitchell: Yeah, you did. You did. Absolutely. And what about you with the way that Gus and Julia?

Alison Goodman: Well, when I was thinking about writing the 'Ill-Mannered Ladies', I wanted to write women that were older in Regency fiction. Because the regency fiction has a tendency to stop, you know, women stop at about 28, nothing after that when they're either married or old men. Yes. And, and Guss and Julia are 42.  

And I wanted to, and I also, when I was creating the character of Gus, I wanted, I wanted her to be able to question the society that she's in. Which of course, because although we've had enormous changes, there are still many things about women's status that haven't changed as much as we'd like or haven't changed at all. So I'm, I created Gus as an apostate. She's lost her faith. And with that, she starts to question all of the so, so-called God mandated placements in, in the world, you know, where women are placed, where everyone has their position and things like that. So she starts to question all of this, and, and in doing so, starts to see, actually see the, the inequalities that's in her society. Whereas before she was just kind of living oblivious to them in her sort of higher position.  

So that's, in that way, Gus and Julia can interact. Gus, is it apostate, Julia still has her faith. So there's some friction between the sisters in that sense. And so they interact with the, with the underbelly, I suppose, of the regency world as Gus goes in full blaze with Julia behind her going, but wait, let's think about this. So that's the, the, the twins compliment each other, but they, they're there to, to look at, you know, as they have their kind of full adventures, they are delving into some of those very dark edges of the Regency world.

Kate Mitchell: And there are some very dark aspects to the novel in that regard, aren't there? Both the, the novels, you know, there's the [unclear], the body snatches, sexual slavery, the virgin cure and so on. Were you particularly attracted to this time period because of the kinds of themes then that it allowed you to, to work with in terms of what you've just talked about in the way that drawing parallels between today and?

Alison Goodman: When I, when I was first writing the Regency, which is the Lady Helen novels, which is where I transplanted my, all that kind of thinking about supernatural into the Regency, we call it ‘Pride and Prejudice’ meets Buffy. It was, what I loved about the Regency for that aspect was that what we have is the rambunctious bawdy Georgian era smashing into the civility of the Regency era. And so we have this layer of civility, of manners, but underneath there's all this kind of seething kind of bawdiness and things that are still going on. And, and it's still there. And in that kind of dynamic friction, you know, that's where I found the attraction initially for the Lady Helen.  

Then I thought, no, this is, you know, to actually look at it in a, in a way that is straight historical works, perhaps even better. Beause in the sense because that, that, you know, no need for demons. The demons are humans. eah. So that's where I thought, well, there, there's enough demonic humanity out there to, to satisfy historical novel.

Kate Mitchell: And when did you have a sort of contemporary reader in mind, Sue, for this sort of story about Australia's colonial past? Or how did you kind of negotiate that balance between well, you know, that commitment to historical accuracy or authenticity, but also in a way that will resonate?

Sue Williams: Sure. I mean, it's, it's really hard to write about, you know, women or men from a completely different age, because we don't really know how they thought.

So, you know, it is always gonna be a contemporary view of them, really. But we hope we kind of get something of how they feel. Like Anna Gisa, the wife of Gidley King, must have been appalled when she arrived in Sydney. Her husband hadn't told her about his mistress, and suddenly she's met this woman with a baby in her arms and a little toddler. And you kind of think, well, that horror must transcend the ages. It would be different because so many men had affairs with convict women and then just went back to England to their wives, or brought their wives over and said, well, this is my mistress, but she's now our servant. And so it was kind of, you know, everyone was doing it.  

But at the same time, you kind of think on a human level, it must have been so hard for those women. And I talked to an historian, who is a direct descendant of Gidley King, and he wrote a book about Gidley King, and he's very proud of him, quite rightly. But he kind of dismissed Ann Inett in about a line. And I said, well, I think she's much more important, and the fact that, you know, Gidley King behaved in this way, I think needs to be documented. And he said, no, I don't think anyone needs to know that. So it's kind of, you know, it was a clash between us. And he's a lot older than me, and he's obviously got a very distinguished pedigree and very defensive about that.  

But, you know, I think I wanna be, I wanna have my honesty in there and, and maybe it's overstated in terms of the age, but we can only judge from our own perspective. And from all the research we've done and trying to understand people's the time and the age they were in really, and their perspective. So we can never be completely 100% right. But we can try our best, really. Mm. And hopefully, you know, people will emote with the characters and identify with them, and we can kind of go on their journey with them a bit.

Kate Mitchell: And it's really beautiful actually, the way you describe or portray the sort of eventual friendship between Ann and Anna, isn't it?  

Sue Williams: That's right. Everybody's got the same names, Elizabeth, Elizabeth, Ann Ann. Yeah. It's really hard. But yeah, I mean, women were nothing if not pragmatic, pragmatic. They were in really difficult position. And then sometimes, you know, Elizabeth McCarthur, Elizabeth Macquarie, their husbands hated each other. They were on the opposite sides of the political divide. But it made much more sense for them to get on. Well, yeah. And it made much more sense for Anna Gier and Anne Ener to, to find some kind of accommodation, especially when Gidley King was saying he wanted to take his mistress’s children away and wanted to give them to his wife. You know? Yeah. You kind of have to think about that too, really.

Kate Mitchell: So do you feel a sense of responsibility then? I mean, it must have been, I don't know, interesting, but maybe confronting or, or limiting to meet a descendant of Sure. A character or a person that you're fictionalising.

Sue Williams: That's right. Absolutely. And we had a few arguments, but it kind of remains civil really. Yeah. And for the launch of the book, Jonathan King came to the launch and he, so he's a direct descendant of Gidley King and his wife Anna Josepha. And I managed to track down some descendants of Gidley King and his mistress Ann Inett. And I thought, I'll get them together at the launch. And I thought, I have no idea how this is gonna go. And I was a bit nervous about the whole thing, but in fact, I introduced Jonathan and I introduced the woman, and they, she was much younger. She's about 17. And she, she didn't know much about her heritage, but then she'd read the book and she was really interested and excited about it. And they, I thought they were gonna kind of shake hands across the, but they actually hugged each other, which I thought was fantastic. Yeah. And there's a lot of descendants of Gidley King, and there's a lot of descendants of his mistress in Australia. And lots of people have written to me and said, oh, and there's a character in there, Olivia Gascoigne, who was on Norfolk Island who she was my great-great grandmother. And so you really do have a responsibility because these are, there are lots of living relatives of these people around, and you have to treat them very fairly.  

And so, you know, nobody's, I, I think in real life, nobody's really bad. Maybe Putin, I don't know, but, but nobody's felt kind of a hundred percent bad. There are people who maybe are 60% bad, but there's, they've got a bit of niceness about them, really. And I think you kind of have to be fair to your characters and, and make, give them light and dark as well. And, you know, not just try and whitewash them and pretend they're all fantastic. So, yeah. You just have to try and make them real people, I think humans.

Kate Mitchell: Allison, I wanted to go back to something that you said about your writing process, which included visiting locations that you were writing about. And I wondered if, you know, I think we're running out of time, but if you would each just say something a little more about your actual you, cause you've talked a lot about your, you know, enjoying the research process and that, what that process looked like. You know, in terms of what the process was, but what that sort of interplay was between creating a sort of fictional world and undertaking research and moving back and forth, maybe between.

Alison Goodman: Yeah, yeah. Well, initially when I was writing the Lady Helen series, I did 8 months of a deep kind of dive into the Regency period, which was fantastic. I was reading everything I could and I got all the times newspapers from the period that I was working in. And you were doing all those kind of very deep dives. And then I had the chance to go over and walk the ground and, and where the settings, where I was setting each of the books and things like that. So that's sort of pre kind of research that I do, that gave me a great foundation of that period. So when I was thinking about my characters walking into room, say, then I would know at what, what kind of carpet would be on the floor for that level of society, you know, what kind of candles would be in the sconces. One of the things that I found out was that there were candles that were measured in hours. So when you walked into a ballroom and there was an 8-hour candle in the, in the, you know, in the -  

Sue Williams: Sandelabra.  

Alison Goodman: Yes. So it was gonna be a long way and very, very sad when it was only a 4-hour candle. So there are things like that where I, the, the ins and outs of how you would move through that environment.  

And then the writing starts, and that's sort of building characters and just, just in terms of that question that you just asked before, the way that I create the characters for, to, to be able to kind of reach hopefully a contemporary audience, but still stay within the, within the, as we, as we have discussed, kind of that limit, we are limited in the way that we can think about the mindset of those people, but we try our best to bridge it, is that I look for the seeds of modern thought in the time. So abolition, abolitionism and things like the apostate, there was beginning to be thoughts about atheism. Shelly got sent down from university because he wrote a pamphlet about atheism. So those kind of, all things come into creating. And then, I dunno if you're the same, but then of course there's, there's always gaps in your research. So you're running off here and researching on this thing and then coming back and going off and doing some more research and coming back and slowly building that world as you go along. But I have a foundation first.  

Kate Mitchell: So the research began the sort of process.

Alison Goodman: Yeah. The research began, and then as soon as I got to that comfortable level where I thought, okay, now I can move through this environment without having to go and research sort of the smaller stuff. Then I can, I can move forward into writing the story and then I'll research and I go back and research like the biggest stuff that I need for each particular storyline.

Sue Williams: And it's kind of easier for me in some ways because I've got a set timeline that's, that's real. And so I will immerse myself in research for, and then try and work out how I'm gonna write the book and how, which parts of each era I'm going to magnify which parts I'm just gonna kind of skip over. Because you can't obviously include everything. So you kind of learn as much as you can about the research. And finally you just bury yourself in it. And then finally your publisher phone is up and says, where's this bloody manuscript? And you think, oh my God, I better start writing. 'cause research is really pleasant. And I've got a friend who started lots of books, but he spends all his time doing research. 'cause you just go down all the rabbit holes. He never does anything really. So that, that's a really nice part of the book.  

But you end, you can end up with so much research, it's completely overwhelming. And you can't see a way through. And I think that's what happened with the first book. That's why I panicked so much. But every single book I panic about, really, I'm panicking about the next book. Now you'd think I'd be over that by now, but it happens every time because even in research you kind of discover these little things that you never realised.  

I'm doing a book about MacArthur's 3 daughters for the next book. And his eldest daughter never married. She fell in love twice. But John MacArthur forbade her to marry her lovers. Well, she, they weren't really lovers, they were suitors. And I discovered just yesterday that she'd been a bridesmaid to one of her friends. And you think this poor woman ended up a spinster. She never married. Broken heart with the first guy John Oxley, that she wasn't allowed to marry. And then she's a bridesmaid. How hard would that have been? And I mean, for me, that kind of really strikes a chord. And I know that will be a chapter on its own. So that research just throws up diamonds constantly, really.

Kate Mitchell And do you have a process for working out what's really interesting but needs to be let go of for the novel or?  

Sue Williams: Absolutely. Because you can end up, you don't wanna bore the reader, really. You want the reader to know that you've got a grasp of, of the research so you, they, they feel confident in your hand, but you can't bombard them with facts. And I think lots of new writers, and myself included at the beginning, you just try and explain everything. You kind of give everything context. And you have this point where you're talking about, you're talking about ships, and you're talking about the First Fleet. And I showed my partner my first chapter of a book and he said, look, you are fine. You've got so much information here, though. It was going so well before HMS Exposition sailed in. And you think Yes, that's true.  

So you have to be really careful. You kind of do all the research, you put it in and then you just strip it out again. You want the story to sing. You want the characters to live, and you can't, otherwise they just get muffled by all the research. You just can't afford that really. Mm. You just, people need to know that, you know, the period and that there's no problems, there's nothing, people are not going upstairs to bed when there's only one floor. Which I've done before.

Alison Goodman: It's like writer’s authority you've gotta sort of give that reader, or the sense that there's an authority there that knows, but not gonna be boring about it.

So that, it's, it's about, I mean, when I'm creating that kind of forward, forward movement, it's about, for me, I'm writing in a first person narration. So it's through Gus's point of view. So it would be very strange for Gus to actually be explaining her world as if she's never walked through it before. So it's about what is interesting her in her at that moment. And that's always attached to the problem that she's solving at the time. So there's a whole kind of, you know, there's a whole kind of stream and sort of jet stream of what, what's going on in terms as she's moving through that world. It's kinda like, well she's, you know, she's got find a particular book. She's going to be looking through the books, and so we can get some ideas of what's been published and that kind of thing. So this is the way I drop in the information to make sure that it's always moving forward. Otherwise you can get bogged down in that kind of, in that kind of love of the research.

Kate Mitchell: I think on, on that point, there's, I think in your books, Allison, there's a, there is that sort of sense of building the world through the detail. You mentioned the carpet and the sconces and you know, the candles and so on, but also clothing. Mm. And I'm wondering whether you have a little treat,  

Alison Goodman: I do have a little treat

Kate Mitchell: For us.

Alison Goodman: I do, if I may. So what I've brought when I, part of my, kind of immersing myself in the research was that when I wrote the Lady Helen books, and I was quite a bit younger, I thought I would go to events and I would dress in Regency gear. Right now, I cannot sew at all. My mother is a master embroiderer. She teaches embroidery and she has a daughter who can't thread a needle. But I thought, well, what I'll do is I'll, I actually do what the Regency ladies would do, and I would employ a Mantua maker to create my wardrobe for me, who's actually in Canberra, a costumer in, in Canberra, yay Canberra. And so I got a, a wardrobe made, which would probably have been similar to what someone of class of Jane Austen. So genteel a little bit, you know, not a lot of money, but quite interested in fashion. Jane Austen was quite interested in fashion, very interesting.  

So I wanted to go through the layers of what a lady would wear. And so the first layer that we would have is the chemise. So it's a very simple undergarment with a drawstring. This was if you kept this clean, so if you change this every few days, you would consider yourself clean. You may not bathe, but you would consider yourself clean. So that was the first layer.  

The second layer, I might just come over here, would be your corset. Now this is a Regency corset, as you can see, it's quite small and it's about the, about the same level comfort as a, as a modern bra. The sleeves come slightly off, off the shoulder because the gowns were cut so low. And this is, this area here, ladies and gentlemen, was the real estate. So that was, there was a lot, there's quite a bit of a, a kind of uplift within the corset to show off those. And of course, there were also at that time, false breasts. If, if you didn't have quite the uplift one needed, they were made out of wax. So do not stand near the fire. Wow. There were some tragedies. So that's the, and that was always worn over the chemise. So you never had this against skin.  

So up top that, on top of that would be your petticoat. Now this is a summer petticoat. It's cotton. It has a little bit more fanciness at the bottom. You can see a little bit of tuck work that would go over. In winter it might be flannel for warmth. And often they were coloured as well. Dyeing was becoming a big trade for everyone's clothes at that point. And there was a rush to try and find the Turkish red. There was actually a prize to actually find a Turkish red that would hold. No one, no one had it until I think quite late when some French, French dudes worked it out. But that's the petticoat. Now just.  

Sue Williams: Let me take it.

Alison Goodman: Oh, thank you. Thank you. Now, just as a little side interest, and I think you've got a fabulous story that goes along with these. Most ladies did not wear underpants, but there was this option, which was the crotchless, as we see, there we go. You would tie them on and you, as you could see, a little bit of lace at the bottom. And they would go under the very, very sheer muslins that were available at the time, which I'll show you in a minute. But I think you have a wonderful story.

Sue Williams: Well, Mary Bligh was very fashion conscious, and her mother would send her clothes over from London, the latest London fashions. And I think her mother felt very embarrassed that poor Mary had to come and accompany her father all the way over here because her mother didn't wanna spend 6 months on a ship with her husband William Bligh, because he's so bad tempered. And so she sent her second eldest daughter over. But Mary was so fashion conscious, her mother would send her all these clothes all the time. And one time she sent her this very flimsy A-line dress that in the drawing rooms of London would've been fine because they're so dark.  

But in the strong Sydney sunlight, she, she wore her new outfit for the first time to church. And she had white pantaloons like you see there underneath. And the strong Sydney sunshine came through the gaps and just illuminated her pantaloon. And everybody, when she stood up to say prayers, everybody behind her, all the soldiers of the Rum Corps fell about laughing and shouting. And she turned round and did the only thing a lady could do in those circumstances. She fainted, there's nothing else.  

And Bligh turned round, saw the soldiers laughing, saw what was happening, and he ordered them all out of the church. And he roasted them outside. And that was one of the reasons that the revolution happened. The rebellion happened in the end because the soldiers hated him so much. And that was just one more chink in his armour, really. Because of Mary's love of fashion.

Alison Goodman: Because of pantaloons. So this, it's, this is a muslin gown that, as you can see is quite sheer. So you'll definitely want your petticoats underneath it. And this is a day dress. And this is a blocked print that was actually taken from a Regency design and the printing kind of process was coming into fashion. It was quite new. And it's very, very, very light. So this would be, even though it is very light, it would've been worn in winter as well. So it would be quite chilly. You can see that there's a lovely gathering at the back as well. This one hasn't got a train. The next one that I'll show you does, here we go.  

So if you were wanting to show that you had some wealth, you would have a white gown. Because the amount of effort it took to keep it clean showed that you had laundry facilities other than yourself. So this is the white gown, sorry. It's about so creased, it's come from Melbourne. And this would've been a day gown as it stood here. But if you didn't have a lot of money, you would have to change up your dress for evening wear. And it was actually required that if you were di dressing for dinner, that you would do something to your gown in order to make it different.  

So one of the options was to pin in a long sleeve. So you'd have a long sleeve pinned in. Or, and we wouldn't do this for dinner. I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna backtrack slightly. If you, for day wear, you would have a little, well we call it a chemisette, it wouldn't have been called a chemisette at the time because that's too French, but it's a little filler, A little filler kind of over the real estate. And then you would unveil the real estate for dinner.  

Another way of adding a difference, I'll just put that there, is to add a little waistcoat, a little what they called waistcoat over the bodice so that you'd get a different look for the gown. And that way you wouldn't have to have such a large wardrobe, which a lot of the women couldn't afford. Thank you.  

Now the outerwear, which is some of the, the more delicious things. I'll just, the spencer jacket was very much in fashion during the time. A little short jacket, if I can, can I have a ladies' maid, please?  

Sue Williams: Yes.  

Alison Goodman: Thank you. Thank you.  

Sue Williams: It's really nice, isn't it?  

Alison Goodman: Yes. As you can see, you can see the construction at the back, which is very much a Regency construction of the diamond, gives a bit more movement in the arms. And that would be, as you said, coming up with the empire line. So it all looked very flowing and very sort of Grecian, which was the ideal of the time.  

Sue Williams: That's a lot of Layers, isn't it?

Alison Goodman: It's all very quite comfortable considering what was coming afterwards in the Victorian era. It was very comfortable.  

This is, this is based on the 1995 Elizabeth Bennett jacket. And it took the seamstress quite a while. As you can see, we've got this, the sliced Renaissance sleeves or Renaissance sleeves. It's, this is very awkward. Sorry. I'm, here we go. Sure. Oops, here we go. There we go. So there was quite a lot of this kind of slashing through and, and interest around the shoulder line and things like that. Again, the, the diamond shapes. So that's that one.  

Now moving on to when it gets a little bit colder, you would have your full pelisse, PELI double SE. There we go. For the winters.

Sue Williams: You could wear that today, couldn't you?

Alison Goodman: Yes.

Kate Mitchell: Is that Turkish red?

Alison Goodman: And we have the frogged term fastening here because the, it's Napoleonic era and there's a lot of military influence on those fashions. So that's, that's the pelisse. Very comfortable.  

Now in, in terms of ball gown, this is my ball gown. It's probably a little bit later than the era that I, I write in 1812. And this has got some detail on the bottom of the gown, which makes it probably a little bit later coming into about 1816 to 1818. Again, you'll see that there's a lot of slashing and things like that. So this is silk. It looks not so dynamic at the moment because it was flat in it, but it's really quite a lovely gown to wear. Lots of swish, lots of, and it's been danced in at a guild hall dance at Bath where they had a costume ball. My husband got dressed as well, bless him. And yeah, it was as close to a ball we could, as we could get. And it was just a wonderful time. So that's the, a ball gown from that time.  

And finally.

Sue Williams: I could get a job doing this.  

Alison Goodman: Thank you. I told you that my mother is a master embroider, and so she's made me some reticule. These are the small little bags or purses that were used at the time, as you can see the gorgeous little embroidery there. I went down a rabbit hole when I was researching what would've happened when a lady went to a ball. Where would she put her reticule? Would she carry it? Would she put it in the, in the room, set aside with the maids in case you got a rip in your gown, what would happen to it? And I spent hours researching this and I, I finally went to an expert. I said, well, what happened? And they said, we don't know. And I thought, I can do what I want. So that was very helpful for my plot. But yeah, so that's one of the reticules that she's made and another. So I'm very lucky there.  

And of course you'd have your clocked silk stockings. These have got elastic in them, so not quite excellent.  

And finally, oh, well, not quite finally but this is one of the shawls, you, a lot of shawls came from India, east India company things. So I would have that. Another layer. People often wore shawls around the house as well, because it was so cold. Knitted shawls. This would be a fancy one for a ball.  

And I told you I don't sew, but I did make a bonnet. It took me ages and I had to pull it out twice. But I'm very proud of it. So you're going to see it. Here we go.

Kate Mitchell: So there are so many things to still talk about, I think. But what we'd like to do is open up for some questions from everyone who's heard you speak this evening. And so there'll be roving microphones, so if you've got a question, just raise your hand and someone will come and give you the microphone. Particularly important because we have people online.  

Nancy Clarke: Oh, thanks Kate, yes.

Audience member 1: Thank you very much. That was really, really fascinating. So thank you. One of the things that I have encountered from time to time when you read historical fiction is people's, people having emotions or that you don't think really gel with the period or people using language from, which wouldn't have been used at the time as well. And I'm just wondering how, when you are trying to convey how people think or how people speak, how you, how you manage that.  

I've often thought that a good editor would've said, no way, you can't have that word or that expression in literature set in this era. But I'm wondering how you manage it and whether you've had editors who've said, that doesn't ring true, you know, to a reader.

Sue Williams: It's, it's kind of, I suppose probably 20 years ago it was quite fashionable to write in very old English in an old English way that, that your characters might have spoken, but now it's much more fashionable to write in contemporary English. So it's a way that readers would really understand and completely, you know, they'd, they'd be able to read it very, very easily. But you are absolutely right about the words you should never be able to use, you should never use words that weren't in use at that time.  

And I think we probably all, we're all spending a lot of time looking at dictionaries to make sure when a word came into fashion and we never. So yes, you're right. An editor should always let the writer know if they've, you know, said the word bullshit and bullshit was never obviously used at that point. So you never use words that weren't around then, or you should never. But you do tend to use language and the conversation and kind of the informality that we use today. Because the idea is that readers can relate to that and they can read it very easily.  

I mean, you know, we've had Peter Carey write the Ned Kelly book in old English, and that was really hard for a lot of people and they don't really believe that should be done anymore.

Alison Goodman: Yeah. It's, it is about accessibility for the reader. But the way that I approach it was that I, I built in that sense of that time through the syntax. So instead of, you know, instead of using that being, you know, the, that kind of long run on sentences, you know, that kind of is now so alien to us after Hemingway, that building in that kind of syntax that, that time helps to create that flavour, but doesn't create a kind of block to the reader.  

But also you have to be, you do have to be very careful because one of the, one of the things that I need to be careful about is that there are so many words to do and built around locomotion and trains hadn't been invented at that point. So all the, the words around timekeeping and speed are often around locomotion. So those are the words that I am, I'm constantly, you know, thinking, where does that come from? What am I, how do I tell time? How is time felt when, when we didn't have that kind of locomotion anchor. So that you have to be very, very careful. And I'm, I am constantly looking at the dictionary of etymology.

And you know, 18, 1816, oh, can't use it. You know? Cause I'm in 1812, occasionally I've tried to sneak something through. That's 1819 and my editor goes now, oh no. Okay.

Kate Mitchell: We have a question from right at the back here.

Audience member 2: I guess it's slightly related to the last, to the last answer. I'm wondering how much you attention you pay to what the audience of your books might appreciate or want when you are, when, I mean, do you sort of think, oh, I'll put that bit in because it'll go really well with the book clubs?

Sue Williams: I think you write to please yourself really. And you kind of think, if I'm entertained and I'm really interested in this thing, then maybe readers will be as well. But if you start trying to second guess readers, it's really, really hard. Because some readers will like some things, you know, it's an impossible task.  

So I always think what really interests me, will this really spark my imagination? And that's all you can do, I think. Really. You can't really, you know, otherwise we'd all be bestsellers around the world constantly because we'll be able to predict exactly what our readers would like.

Alison Goodman: Well I was very lucky to study with Gerald McCain and he always said, follow your obsessions and, 'cause if you're obsessed by it, someone else will be. And so I always think about it. I think about, well, you know what is interesting me, just like you, what is interesting me? And, you know, I'm, I am writing a book which is about female freedom and, and coming to self and that that's what interests me and all those things around that. So, you know, that happens to be, you know, a good book to have a glass of wine. Fabulous. But I didn't write it like that.

Kate Mitchell: Okay. We've got time for one more question. Yes. Just over here.

Audience member 3: Hi. Thanks very much. Absolutely. Fascinating. On the subject of editing, I can't help noticing that ‘The Ladies Road Guide’ hasn't got a, an apostrophe after ladies. Is that an editor's decision or?

Alison Goodman: It was because it's one of the guides that they used to have rather than particular ladies. So it's the ladies as in all of the ladies guide. It's, it's following the, the convention of the time.

Sue Williams: A Guide to Being Ladies.

Alison Goodman: Yes. Yeah, yeah. But thank you for noticing.

Nancy Clarke: I'm so sorry to have to break this up. It been a treat in all ways. When we devised this program, the events subcommittee of the Friends, we had it, we did have at the back of our heads the bicentenary celebrations of the birth of Jane Austen, whose novels were written exact and set it exactly this time and this year there's been, as we know, huge and well deserved attention to her work and her life.  

But we thought this would be a prompt to cast a wider net and to reflect on some other women of the period real and imagined. And it's been fantastic. So I've, the connection has been superb.  

So thank you all so much from all of us. We are grateful that you've come here, you've given thought and the time you've talked to one another and to us so carefully and thoughtfully. And Kate, thanks so much also for your thoughtful and gracious moderating of the conversation. Would you please all thank our 3 speakers?  

Now we've had one wonderful surprise. We loved the dressing up. And I kept on thinking about the clothes that Mary Bligh was wearing and how scandalous she was. So I could see all of that happening. And then I was wondering a little bit about how Ann Inett got on. She was a seamstress, but she didn't have all of those fabrics.  

But before we do wind up, there's one more thing and that is a lucky door prize. There's a very tiny book that was kindly donated by Allison along with a gift from the Friends ourselves. And Belinda has told me that the winner of the lucky door prize is Rhyl Hurley. So Rhyl whom I know as it happens, can you kindly make yourself known to a member of the Library staff as you leave? And that is that.

As I said at the start, the bookshop is open until 7:30 and Alison and Sue are now going to be going up to the foyer where they will be very happy to sign copies of the books. Thank you all for coming.