While I’m dispensing drinks, a bottle of port is owed to Dr. Jonathan Romanyshyn, who not only answered frantic questions like “How DOES cholera work, anyway?” but went through lists of Victorian remedies and explained to me what made medical sense and what didn’t (i.e., most of it) and why. Dr. Braithwaite and I both thank you. Thanks go, too, to Georgina Schaeffer for her advice on matters equestrian, and for reminding me (fortunately for me, but unfortunately for Emily!) of that sidesaddle scene in Auntie Mame.
There aren’t enough thanks in the world for my secret research weapon, librarian extraordinaire Vicki Parsons, who took on this project as though it were her own and spent countless hours hunting down everything from abstruse articles in defunct journals to obscure Victorian travel narratives and journals. The better part of the detail in this book comes from those thousands of files she sent my way, from subaltern’s butter to the ornaments in London Turner’s drawing room.
If there was ever a reason to use the hashtag “blessed” unironically, it would be in reference to my amazing writer friends. Thank you to Tasha Alexander and Deanna Raybourn for guidance on matters Victorian, to Andrea DaRif for Yale Club cookies and a sympathetic ear, to Alyson Richman and Lynda Cohen Loigman for general jollity, and to my writing sisters, Karen White and Beatriz Williams, for endless text chains, Daily Telegraph distraction, and letting me borrow the Unibrain when I need it.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that the writer of a book must be in want of a reader. I am deeply indebted, as both a reader and a writer, to the booksellers and librarians who dedicate their careers to putting the right book into the right hands. If I named all my favorite bookstores, it would take forever, but I want to make special mention of the Corner Bookstore in New York, Diane’s Books of Greenwich, FoxTale in Atlanta, the Poisoned Pen in Scottsdale, Murder by the Book in Houston, and the Ripped Bodice in Culver City. Whenever I walk through those doors, I feel like I’ve come home. (Hand me a latte, and I may never leave.) Thank you, so very much, to all the booksellers and librarians reading this page—and to all the booksellers and librarians who aren’t. What you do is pure magic.
Moving from magic to technology, I have many feelings about the electronic age in which we live, some of them more printable than others. On the plus side, the internet has enabled a flourishing of communities dedicated to readers and writers. Thank you to Andrea Peskind Katz, Sharlene Martin Moore, Bobbi Dumas, Robin Kall Homonoff, Jennifer Tropea O’Regan, and to the many, many wonderful readers, bloggers, and reviewers who have nourished and participated in these virtual literary salons. Thank you so much for your support of books and authors. It means the world to all of us—and has increased my TBR pile tenfold.
No acknowledgments section would be complete without a shout-out to my sister, Brooke Willig, and my college roommate, Claudia Brittenham, who both endured endless hours of discussion about character and plot, read multiple drafts of the first three chapters, and kept me from scrapping the whole thing at least a dozen times. For the nineteenth time. They’ve gone through this with every single book since the first one, way back in 2003. And yet they still pick up the phone when I call. I’m not sure why you put up with me, but I’m so glad you do.
Many thanks go to the staff of my favorite writing Starbucks, particularly Andrea and Jose, for always asking about the book, knowing my drink order better than I do, and never minding when I sit in the same place for six hours straight. You are the best, and I’m so lucky to have you as officemates.
Last but not least, thank you to my family: to my parents, for putting in a ludicrous amount of babysitting time; to my husband, for taking care of pretty much everything I prefer to ignore (which encompasses a wide variety of things, including, but not limited to, garbage disposal and the mysterious art of making the Wi-Fi work); to my brother, for sending gifts of cheese at stressful times; to my sister, for—well, you know about my sister; and to my children, Madeleine and Oliver, for doing their best, in their own unique ways, to delay the writing of this book.
Thank you all!
About the Author
LAUREN WILLIG is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Ashford Affair and The English Wife, the RITA Award–winning Pink Carnation series, and two novels cowritten with Beatriz Williams and Karen White—The Forgotten Room and The Glass Ocean. An alumna of Yale University, she has a graduate degree in history from Harvard and a JD from Harvard Law School. She lives in New York City with her husband, preschooler, baby, and vast quantities of coffee.
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Also by Lauren Willig
The English Wife
The Other Daughter
That Summer
The Ashford Affair
The Pink Carnation Series
Copyright
the summer country. Copyright © 2019 by Lauren Willig. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
first edition
Cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa
Cover images © LOGUNOVA ELENA / Shutterstock (flowers); essaya / Shutterstock (field); © Malgorzata Maj / Trevillion Images; © Aleksandar Todorovic / shmeljov / bigstock (2 images)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.
Digital Edition JUNE 2019 ISBN: 978-0-06-283904-6
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-283902-2
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