Blog Tour - A Most Handsome Gentleman by Suzan Lauder - Guest Post and Giveaway

I'm very happy to be welcoming Suzan Lauder back to the blog today with the blog tour for her latest book, which has a premise that is both a little disturbing and fascinating: what if Mr Collins was very attractive? Mr Collins has done very well in life considering he is somewhat ridiculous. He has a very high opinion of himself as it is. But what if... he can add to his eligibility by having attractiveness of person? That's bound to affect his expectations, and very probably people will react to him differently.

The more you think about this premise the more potential ripples this variation may make occur to mind! Let me share the blurb with you and then I'll hand over to Suzan for her guest post.


Book Blurb:

Elizabeth Bennet’s life is uncomplicated until she meets a quartet of new men: the haughty but handsome Mr. Darcy, the pert-with-a-pout Mr. Bingley, the confident and captivating Mr. Wickham—and then there is her father’s cousin, the happy man towards whom almost every female eye has turned.

Mr. Collins is HOT—well, incredibly handsome in Regency-speak—beautiful of face, fine of figure, elegant of air, his perfect clothing and hair matching his Greek god-like form. Unfortunately, when he opens his mouth, Elizabeth wishes he were mute. With affected servility and prideful self-conceit, he capitalizes upon his exquisite appearance and fixes on Jane Bennet as his bride.

Can Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy form an alliance to stop Jane’s suitors from issuing challenges—and will Elizabeth coax a smile from Mr. Darcy?

Bestselling Regency romance author Suzan Lauder delivers a hilarious Austenesque romance suitable for all readers of Pride and Prejudice.

Guest Post from Suzan Lauder

I owe much appreciation to Ceri for hosting this little explanatory post related to a plot theme carried through the book A Most Handsome Gentleman.

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In Praise of Voluptuous Ladies (spoiler alert)

While avoiding too much of a spoiler for a key plot point in A Most Handsome Gentleman, I’d like to tell the readers some behind-the-scenes stories related to why we mention the sizes of ladies in the book, both slender and round.

While writing Letter from Ramsgate, I stumbled across of a couple of Pinterest pinners who had clicked into the fact that not all women in the Regency were young, slim, tiny, and had upper bodies that would easily fit the briefest of bodices like those models in Ackermann’s Repository of Art and La Belle Assemblée. These pinners made up boards that contained numerous portraits of Regency women who were larger than average, as well as older and more busty examples. One board was called “Voluptuous Regency”. I had selected one of the ladies on that board as Lady Edwina in Letter from Ramsgate.

A quote from Pride and Prejudice has always suggested to me that Austen is trying to tell us that Jane was a bit heavy: “Jane, who was not so light nor so much in the habit of running as Elizabeth, soon lagged behind…”.

After Jane Austen and her brother Henry attended a portrait exhibition in Spring Gardens on May 21, 1813, she wrote to her sister Cassandra that one of the portraits looked excessively like she would have imagined Mrs. Bingley (Jane Bennet), and went on to describe the portrait. From her description, it’s believed that she was referring to a portrait of Mrs. Quentin by Jean François-Marie Huet-Villiers. In the portrait, Mrs. Quentin is has a softly rounded face and generous figure with fashionably sloped shoulders and blonde curls, and wears a green ribbon, “a favourite colour with [Mrs. Bingley].” Mrs. Quentin would be on the larger side of average today and, if compared with fashion plates of the day, larger than a desirable size for the Regency. She’s prettily plump. When I thought of Mr. Collins’ original choice of Jane Bennet in Pride and Prejudice (before Mrs. Bennet redirects him to Elizabeth), I had this type of lady in my imagination.

Because Mr. Collins is so terribly handsome and knows it, not only is he admired by every woman he meets, but he’s rather picky about which ladies he favours because he knows he can afford to be picky. This issue put the author in a difficult situation. In the twist represented in A Most Handsome Gentleman, why would a terrible hot Mr. Collins marry Charlotte if she was the sort of lady who had been passed by for ten years (assuming a normal Regency age of seventeen for being available for marriage) when he could have any lady he chose? Numerous ideas, some rather racy, were tossed around between me and my friends in AHA Chat, who are some of the liveliest brainstormers around (thanks, chitties!). She had to have, uhm, talents that no one else had. We discarded the more x-rated talents as this book was not intended to be mature. I had my own special idea for Charlotte, though, and you’ll have to read the book to find out the details.

Now I myself happen to be slightly larger than a healthy weight for our modern era, though in Western culture, I’m average. However, I had made some comments in the original draft of the novel that set off a warning by beta NinaH: “be careful when making fat jokes.” On the contrary, my intention was in praise of larger women, of which the BMI says I am numbered. But she was right. One line was a little too catty, and it was cut before the story hit the public’s perusal.

On the flip side, both my sisters struggle with weight issues because they’re too slender, and have seen nutritionists to help them with ideas on how they can gain enough weight to be in a healthy weight range. That’s my father’s side of the family creeping in. It’s just as much of a struggle as the women on my mother’s side, who tend to hold onto their weight. In A Most Handsome Gentleman, I made the Bennet sisters have a similar mix: some slim and the others prettily plump like Jane.

But in defense of handsome men who like a round woman, years ago I read an enlightening interview of a half-dozen handsome, successful, and athletic young men in their twenties where they were asked about the physical features they liked in women. Although a few insisted she be lean and athletic (a “hardbody” like them), more than half indicated that they preferred what they referred to as a “soft woman,” and clarified “soft” as slightly overweight. I liked that!

I’m sure readers will relate to one side or another of this coin!

~~~

Author Bio:

A lover of Jane Austen, Regency period research and costuming, cycling, yoga, blogging, and independent travel, cat mom Suzan Lauder is seldom idle.

Her first effort at a comedy, A Most Handsome Gentleman is the fourth time Lauder has been published by Meryton Press. Her earlier works include a mature Regency romance with a mystery twist, Alias Thomas Bennet, a modern short romance Delivery Boy in the holiday anthology Then Comes Winter, and the dramatic tension filled Regency romance Letter from Ramsgate.

She and Mr. Suze split their time between a loft condo overlooking the Salish Sea and a
150-year-old Spanish colonial home near the sea in Mexico.

Suzan’s lively prose is also available to her readers on her blog, road trips with the redhead www.suzan.lauder.merytonpress.com, on her Facebook author page https://www.facebook.com/SuzanLauder, and on Twitter @suzanlauder.

• Website • Goodreads Author Page • Facebook • Twitter • Amazon Author Page • Pinterest •

Buy Links:

A Most Handsome Gentleman by Suzan Lauder is available to buy now in kindle or paperback. It can also be read on Kindle Unlimited - Amazon US - kindle, paperback / Amazon UK - kindle, paperback / Amazon CA - kindle, paperback. You can also add it to your Goodreads shelves.

Giveaway Time!

Meryton Press are offering ebooks of A Most Handsome Gentleman to commenters on the blog tour posts. To enter, please use the rafflecopter. You can earn additional entries daily by tweeting or commenting on blog tour stops. This giveaway is open internationally.

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Blog Tour Schedule:

20 Oct   My Jane Austen Book Club; Character Interview, Excerpt, Giveaway

21 Oct   My Love for Jane Austen; Guest Post, Giveaway

22 Oct   Obsessed with Mr. Darcy; Review

23 Oct   Austenesque Reviews; Vignette, Giveaway

24 Oct   Tomorrow is Another Day; Review

25 Oct   Babblings of a Bookworm; Guest Post, Giveaway

26 Oct   From Pemberley to Milton; Review, Giveaway

27 Oct   Just Jane 1813; Guest Post, Giveaway

28 Oct   Darcyholic Diversions; Author Interview, Giveaway

29 Oct   My Vices and Weaknesses; Character Interview, Giveaway

30 Oct   Half Agony, Half Hope; Review, Excerpt

31 Oct   Laughing With Lizzie; Vignette, Giveaway

01 Nov   Diary of an Eccentric; Review, Giveaway

02 Nov   So little time…; Guest Post, Excerpt, Giveaway

03 Nov   Margie’s Must Reads; Review, GA