By a Lady: Being the Adventures of an Enlightened American in Jane Austen's England [Paperback]

Amanda Elyot (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 28, 2006

A tale of time travel, true love, and Jane Austen

New York actress C.J. Welles, a die-hard Jane Austen fan, is on the verge of landing her dream role: portraying her idol in a Broadway play. But during her final audition, she is mysteriously transported to Bath, England, in the year 1801. And Georgian England, with its rigid and unforgiving social structure and limited hygienic facilities, is not quite the picturesque costume drama C.J. had always imagined.

Just as she wishes she could click her heels together and return to Manhattan, C.J. meets the delightfully eccentric Lady Dalrymple, a widowed countess who takes C.J. into her home, introducing her as a poor relation to Georgian society—including the dashing Earl of Darlington and his cousin, Jane Austen!

When a crisis develops, C.J.—in a race against time—becomes torn between two centuries. An attempt to return to her own era might mean forfeiting her blossoming romance with the irresistible Darlington and her growing friendship with Jane Austen, but it’s a risk she must take. And in the midst of this remarkable series of events, C.J. discovers something even more startling—a secret from her own past that may explain how she wound up in Bath in the first place.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Offering a picturesque dose of time travel, romance and the atmosphere of 19th-century England, Elyot follows actress C.J. Welles as she is mysteriously transported between present-day Manhattan and Bath of 1801. After an unfortunate stint as "lady's companion" to the abusive Lady Eloisa Wickham, C.J.'s luck arrives in the form of Lady Dalrymple, a progressive thinker who opens her home and her purse to C.J., believing she is her long-lost niece. Despite the pleasures of her adventures in history, which include steamy romance with the dashing Lord Darlington and friendship with Lady Dalrymple's cousin Jane Austen, C.J. must search for the way back to Greenwich Village, where she's auditioning for the role of Jane Austen in a modern-day play. Although she has to struggle to get a grasp on the customs and expectations of the day, C.J. is swiftly—and somewhat unbelievably—accepted as a British woman of the times. Occasionally, Elyot (pseudonymous author of The Memoirs of Helen of Troy and published elsewhere as Leslie Carroll) indulges in verbosity that thickens and slows the story, but there are plenty of upper-crust scandals and snobbery to keep anglophiles engaged. (Mar.)
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Review

“Richly textured and carefully researched, By a Lady is a bright and bawdy romp that combines nitty-gritty life in 1801 Britain with the wit of the real Jane Austen. Amanda Elyot brings the past alive in this fresh and wickedly clever tale.” —Mary Jo Putney, author of Stolen Magic

“For all of us who have always wanted to wake up one day in a world of balls and beaux . . . but wondered how well we would blend in. Teeming with period detail, By a Lady provides a sly peek into Austen’s England through the eyes of a thoroughly modern heroine.” —Lauren Willig, author of The Secret History of the Pink Carnation and The Masque of the Black Tulip

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Product Details

• Paperback: 363 pages
• Publisher: Three Rivers Press (March 28, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400097991
• ISBN-13: 978-1400097999
• Product Dimensions: 5.3 x 0.8 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,636,177 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Oh, my, April 13, 2006

By 

Cynthia S. Froning "astrocyn" (Longmont, CO United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: By a Lady: Being the Adventures of an Enlightened American in Jane Austen's England (Paperback)

It's a cliche, but I can't help it: reading this novel was like watching a train wreck. You try to avert your eyes, but curiosity gets the better of you--it couldn't possibly get worse, could it? Oh yes, it could. By a Lady starts out as as a cute, if improbable, tale of a young actress who steps offstage during a casting call and finds herself in 19 century Bath. Elyot is a bit too eager to show off her research and overstuffs the text with period detail, but at least she attempts to address the problems a 21st century woman would encounter in the past. At some early point, however, the author just throws in the towel and the story gets weirder and more ridiculous with every page. Watch our heroine meet Jane Austen, who is a walking compendium of quotes from her novels rather than an actual person. Listen as our heroine engages in the most unconvincing romance to grace the literary world in some time. Stare in increasing incredulity as our heroine wanders through a Bath prison, a Regency brothel, the Bedlam madhouse, and the slums of London. And what's up with this chick, anyway? She shrieks at bitter almonds in the cookies, cringes at the bunny rabbit on the dinner menu, and then causes a commotion at the Assembly by plunging her arm into the punch to remove a fly. At this point, I would have tossed her into Bedlam myself, but the hero just finds her "an original." Yes, ladies, try this at your next social event. All the young men will be intriuged by your sassy style. Uh huh. I haven't made a study of Austen spinoffs so I can't be sure, but By a Lady may rival that classic, Emma Tennat's Pemberely, for the title of Worst Austen Tie-In ever.

Actually, this book is so silly that I can't help but wonder if the author is winking at us. At the start of her novel, she quotes a selection from Sandition about what makes a good novel that is so clearly one of Austen's satirical moments that I can't imagine that Elyot doesn't know that. Perhaps this is Elyot's "Northanger Abbey," a witty skewering of period romances. The very serious "Readers Group Guide" at the back of the book suggests otherwise, but perhaps this too is a sly, postmodern jab at pompus book clubs.

Nah, probably not.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Just Plain Silly, August 21, 2006

By 

Natalie (CA, United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: By a Lady: Being the Adventures of an Enlightened American in Jane Austen's England (Paperback)

The only thing I can give this author credit for is the idea. The rest of it just made me want to laugh! Everything was so horrifyingly predictable - at first I wondered if it was supposed to be a satire on the quintessential "happy ending" novel of the time, but its countless sex scenes forced me to scrap that idea. Not to mention the endless (and I mean endless) coincidences and silly actions by silly characters that I just can't be forced to believe.

And honestly, I could not bring myself to like the protagonist. Her "modern" outlook on life seems, to put it plainly, like that of a modern hooker. She does stupid things and never learns from them - insisting that she won't be "put down" by an era wherein it's merely common sense not to do certain things.

All in all, the author had a good idea, but her writing was too silly to make it worth reading. At least it gave me a good laugh.

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars preposterous, June 14, 2006

By 

Patricia Fentriss "PF" (Snee, MI) - See all my reviews

This review is from: By a Lady: Being the Adventures of an Enlightened American in Jane Austen's England (Paperback)

Cynthia Froning's review covers it quite well. You don't expect much in the way of plausibility from a novel about a woman time traveling back to the time of Jane Austen, but plausibility is kicked so often and so resolutely to the curb in this book that it becomes utterly impossible to care about these characters. The silliest acts of stupidity are reserved for the heroine, but her feckless suitor is a close second, and together they have all the self control of hungry puppies. (ex: They are shocked and dismayed when having sex on a bench in the middle of a garden party is frowned upon...) Even Jane Austen comes off as an idiot, as her out of context self quotations make her seem like the queen of non-sequitors. The author's 'extensive research' seems to be the justification for the most dramatically unmotivated sequences - thirty minutes with a decent history book would probably suffice for anyone who wants to write a book that is similarly well supported.