Jane Austen and Brothers at Sea
Jane Austen’s life and work often sprang into my mind while I was writing Children at Sea. I imagined the black violinist Joseph Emidy playing at occasions like the Mansfield Park or Netherfield balls; I pictured Midshipman Othnel Mawdesley setting off from a parsonage similar to Steventon, leaving behind two unmarried sisters resembling Jane and Cassandra; and I compared William and Charles Barlow’s naval feats with those of her fictional seamen and her own brothers. I even came to suspect that William Barlow crept into the last novel in the shape of a dissolute minor character.
