Today
Shannon Winslow visits the blog with an excerpt of her new book, Mr.
Knightley in His Own Words. As the name will suggest, it’s a book looking
at one of the main characters from Jane Austen’s Emma, but it’s not just
the events from that book that we get to look at from another perspective. More
events from Mr. Knightley’s life are included to consider how he became the man
that we meet in Emma. Shannon has
written a series of this type of book, looking at Sense & Sensibility
in Colonel Brandon in His Own Words and Pride & Prejudice in Fitzwilliam Darcy in His Own Words. Let’s
take a look at the blurb and then I’ll bring you the excerpt for your
enjoyment. I found it to be charming, and I am sure you will too.Book Description
Mr. George Knightley. According to Emma Woodhouse, you won’t see one in a hundred who is so clearly the gentleman. Respected by all, he’s kind, unpretentious, and scrupulously honest, with an air so remarkably good that it’s unfair to compare other men to him. We also know he’s been his “own master” from a young age. But Jane Austen tells us little more.
What were his early years like, and how did he lose his parents? A man in his mid-thirties, he must have had at least one romance along the way. Did it end badly? Is that why he’s never married? When and how did his relationship with Emma shift from friendship to love? And what can explain his incredible forbearance towards the eccentric Mr. Woodhouse? Now, Mr. Knightley reveals these answers and more in His Own Words.
This is not a variation from but a supplement to the original story of Emma, chronicled in the hero’s point of view. Two-thirds completely new material, it features key events in Mr. Knightley’s past – events that still haunt him and yet have shaped who he’s become, the superior man Emma can’t help falling in love with.
