Award-winning British author Jo Baker has perfectly imagined the below stairs world of Jane Austen’s famous Pride and Prejudice in her book Longbourn and she will be at Peoria Public Library Main Library on Monday, July 14 at 6:30 to give fans an inside look at her work. Admission to the event is free, but reservations are requested. Books will be available for purchase at the event and there will be an opportunity to have your book signed by Jo Baker. Please call (309) 497-2150 or email programmingdept@ppl.peoria.lib.il.us to reserve a ticket.
Longbourn has been named A New York Times Book Review Notable Book, a Seattle Times Best Title, a Christian Science Monitor Best Fiction Book, a Miami Herald Favorite Book, and a Kirkus Best Book of the Year. The film version is in pre-production.
In Longbourn, the servants take center stage as this irresistibly imagined belowstairs answer to Pride and Prejudice unrolls. Rather than being a retelling of Pride and Prejudice, it is a story told around the beloved 200-year-old Austen work. While Elizabeth Bennet and her sisters fuss over balls and husbands, Sarah, their orphaned housemaid, is beginning to chafe against the boundaries of her class. When a new footman arrives at Longbourn under mysterious circumstances, the carefully choreographed world she has known all her life threatens to be completely, perhaps irrevocably, upended. Mentioned only fleetingly in Jane Austen’s classic, here Jo Baker dares to take us beyond the drawing rooms of Regency England and, in doing so, uncovers the real world of the novel that has captivated readers’ hearts around the world for generations.
Jo Baker was born in Lancashire, England, and educated at Oxford University and Queen’s University Belfast. She is the author of the novels The Undertow, Offcomer, The Mermaid’s Child, and The Telling. She lives in Lancaster, England.