SATURDAY SPOTLIGHT 3: MARILYN PEMBERTON

Hello everyone. Complementing the author spotlights I ran from 2011 to 2016, today’s Saturday Spotlight, the third, is of Marilyn Pemberton. If you would like to take part in a spotlight, do take a look at Saturday spotlights.

Photo: Rob Tysalls Photography

Marilyn Pemberton retired from being a full-time IT Project Manager in October 2019. She started work straight after her A-levels but at the age of 40 she decided she wanted to exercise the right side of her brain and so commenced a part-time BA in English literature at Warwick University.

This progressed to an MA and then to a PhD on the utopian & dystopian aspects of Victorian fairy tales. After giving a paper at a conference she was approached by a publisher who suggested she gather together some lesser known fairy tales and as a result Enchanted Ideologies: A Collection of Rediscovered Nineteenth-Century English Moral Fairy Tales was published by The True Bill Press in 2010.

During her research Marilyn “discovered” Mary De Morgan, a Victorian writer of fairy tales, amongst many other things. She became somewhat obsessed with De Morgan and as she wanted to share her research she wrote Out of the Shadows: The Life and Works of Mary De Morgan, which was published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing in 2012. Despite her intensive research there were still many gaps in her knowledge and because she just could not let De Morgan, or the act of writing, go she decided to write a fictional novel based on De Morgan’s life – the result being The Jewel Garden. This novel was published by Williams & Whiting in February 2018. This novel was shortlisted for the Chanticleer 2019 International Goethe Book Award for post 1750s Historical Fiction.

Marilyn’s second novel, The Song of the Nightingale: a tale of two castrati, was published in December 2019 by The Conrad Press. It is a historical novel, set in 18th century Italy that tells of two young boys who are bought from their families, castrated and then trained to be singers. This was something that was actually done at the time, though this story is purely fictional. The tale is told from the point of view of Philippe, the count’s secretary, who is responsible for the two boys. It tells of passion, revenge, jealousy, love and redemption. This novel won the 2020 Rubery Book Award for Fiction. This novel is being re-titled as Sold for a Song and will be published early 2023.

Marilyn is currently writing the third book in a trilogy that will tell of three generations of women who are story-tellers but who face sometimes insurmountable obstacles to getting their “her-stories” heard. A Teller of Tales and A Keeper of Tales were published by William and Whiting in 2022. The third book, A Seeker of Tales, will be published in 2023.

Marilyn is a member of the Society of Women Writers & Journalists and has won first prize in one of their short story competitions and second place in a poetry competition. She is a member of the Historical Novel Society, for whom she writes features and reviews, leads the local Herefordshire Society of Authors group and is treasurer of the National Association of Writers and Groups.

*

And now from the author herself:

I never had dreams of becoming a writer until I was well into my fifties. I worked in I.T. until my retirement but did a BA, MA and PhD as a mature part-time student at Warwick University. It was whilst doing my MA that I fell in love with Victorian fairytales and for my PhD, Glimpses of Utopia and Dystopia in Victorian Fairylands, I researched the fairytales written by the likes of John Ruskin, George MacDonald, Jean Ingelow, Christina Rossetti, Mary Louisa Molesworth, E. M. Nesbit and Mary De Morgan. I can guarantee that only a tiny percentage of you will have heard of Mary De Morgan but she is the reason I became fascinated by fairytales as a means to challenge and subvert the prevalent ideologies and she is the reason I started writing fiction.

My obsession with Mary De Morgan led me to write her biography, Out of the Shadows: the Life and Works of Mary de Morgan. I did a significant amount of research on the De Morgan family and also on the topics that would have concerned a Victorian woman such as De Morgan, which she addressed in her subversive fairy tales: the role of women in society, the institution of marriage and the plight of the unmarried woman, slavery, vivisection, class inequality and education.

Despite all this research there were still many things I couldn’t find out about De Morgan and that is when I decided to try my hand at writing fiction. I used my imagination for the first time since my O-levels, to fill in the gaps and wrote a novel, The Jewel Garden, loosely based on her life. By the time this was published I was hooked on writing and it occurred to me that I could make use of the research I had already done, my love of fairytales and my admiration for the women that wrote them, not purely as entertainment, but to articulate their frustrations at the constraints imposed upon them by a patriarchal society.

The basic plot for the trilogy I am writing is for a book of fairytales to be written and added to by three different generations of women that reveals their personal dreams and fears, which are very different depending on the times they are written. Book one, A Teller of Tales, is Lizzie’s story and is set in the 1820s; book two, A Keeper of Tales, is Harriet’s story and is set in 1880s and book three (still a WIP), A Seeker of Tales, is Imogen’s story and is set in the early 1900s.

The bit I have enjoyed the most is the writing of the fairy tales. Some are humorous, some are tragic but all, I hope, reflect the concerns and challenges of the times. I used my understanding of the hidden agenda of fairytales and their potential to subvert and critique societal principles and beliefs to give these women a voice, although they were often shouting into the wind.

You can find more about Marilyn and her writing via…

• https://marilynpemberton.wixsite.com/author
• https://writingtokeepsane.wordpress.com
• https://www.facebook.com/marilyn.pemberton.391
• Out of the Shadows: The life and works of Mary De Morgan
• The Jewel Garden
• Song of the Nightingale
• A Teller of Tales
• A Keeper of Tales

If you would like to take part in an author spotlight, take a look at Saturday Spotlights or email me for details.