Think fairy tales are only for children? Bosh—not when bestselling romance writer Eloisa James is telling the tale. Her latest series for Avon, based on classic fairy tales, began with A Kiss at Midnight (a Cinderella story) and continued in January with When Beauty Tamed the Beast. James has loved fairy tales since she was a child and spoke with Show Daily about the unlikely inspiration for the series.
James will be signing When Beauty Tamed the Beast today, 10–10:30 a.m., at Table 15 in the autographing area; 2:30–3:30 p.m., she'll be joining Julia Quinn and Connie Brockway at the Romance Writers of America booth (3774) to sign The Lady Most Likely.
You've credited your father, Robert Bly, with inspiring your fairy tales series. Iron John and Cinderella seem a rather unexpected literary pairing.
I wouldn't say that my inspiration comes as much from Iron John itself as from the fact that while Dad was working out the ideas behind Iron John, he talked compulsively about fairy stories. He loved to challenge me and my siblings to "explain" such stories in cultural terms—to rewrite them in a way that made them socially relevant.
Can a fairy tale really be reimagined as a story of male empowerment?
Why not? I think of a fairy story as a malleable plot, waiting to be given meaning by its current author. All the stable boys who triumphantly carry out difficult tasks in order to marry a princess could be seen as empowering their gender—but also, depending on the storyteller, their class or their race. My father was interested in male empowerment; I'm not. Our stories are very different.
As both your parents are writers, were there high literary standards for fairy tale reading when you were a child?
We read the Arthur Lang colored fairy tale collections over and over, along with classics like Peter Pan. One of my earliest memories is being terrified by my father's lively rendition of Beowulf, so the standards do seem to have been high.
Growing up, did you prefer the darker versions of stories like Beauty and the Beast or the "we don't want to frighten the children" adaptations?
Darker! Children's stories are frank about deeply frightening aspects of life—the people with shining teeth, lurking in dark parts of the forest growing at your back door.
The beast of When Beauty Tamed the Beast is Piers Yelverton, earl of Marchant, a brilliant, lame, and impossible to get along with doctor. Can we assume that you're a fan of Hugh Laurie and House?
I do love Hugh Laurie—and the screenwriters of House. What inspired me, thinking of the show, was the idea of a doctor unable to carry out hundreds of tests that House prescribes. I poked around for a doctor with House's brilliance and arrogance, found one who published a book in 1812 lauding his own brilliance, and built a plot around his expertise in scarlet fever.
The story of Dido and Aeneas plays a part in A Kiss at Midnight and When Beauty Tamed the Beast includes references to T.S. Eliot as well as
Shakespeare. Some would consider this heady stuff for fairy tale novels.
I think we underrate the intellectual curiosity of the American public. In my novels, I've included lines of poetry by Shakespeare, Eliot, and Catullus, as well as the 17th-century poet Richard Barnfield and the 18th-century poet Christopher Smart. I've written books inspired by a 1607 play called The Hog Has Lost His Pearl, and the life of Clara Josephine Wieck Schumann, probably the foremost female composer of the 19th century. After every novel I am barraged by readers asking for more information, more lines, more poetry. "Where does Catullus live? I'd like to meet him."
Do you have a short list of must read fairy tales... for adults.
Anything by Neil Gaiman or Michael Chabon.