Hi friends! I am so delighted to welcome back author Riana Everly to Austenesque Reviews today! 🙌🏼

As you may have seen, Riana released a new Pride and Prejudice variation just last week – Pride and Pursuit! 📖

That sounds like an exciting title, doesn’t it? And what is even more exciting is the different setting and premise for this story. 😮

Riana is here to share a little more about her unique setting and enticing excerpt from Pride and Pursuit. 🤩

We hope you enjoy! 🤗

Why Wales? Some Historical Background on Setting

Thank you for welcoming me here today, as part of a very short blog tour for my new release, Pride and Pursuit.

Why such a short blog tour?

Well, that’s my fault for planning a release while travelling. But I had so many reasons for my release date, even if it meant I wasn’t nearly organised enough to do things properly.

The first reason I chose September 29 to publish my newest novel is that it’s the birthday of someone special to me. That should be good enough, right? One day, many reasons to celebrate!

The second is a bit more involved.

Pride and Pursuit is a bit of a departure from my other P&P variations. It’s a traditional Regency romance, with Darcy and Elizabeth taking centre stage, as they should. But there is no disastrous Meryton Assembly, no insult, no hurt feelings or wounded pride.

Instead, this story takes a very different route to the Happily Ever After we all desire. (Is that too much of a spoiler?)

Our couple are thrown together when Darcy, frantically trying to escape George Wickham’s murderous wrath after foiling his elopement with Georgiana, resorts to the unthinkable: He steals a carriage from a posting inn.

The problem is that the carriage is not unoccupied. Elizabeth Bennet is asleep inside. And thus, the adventure begins.

Desperate to avoid discovery by their foe, the two unwitting companions find themselves travelling through Wales on their journey to the one place Darcy feels he will be safe. Wales is a beautiful country, magnificent even, with its mountains and valleys, ancient castles and wild scenery, but even today it is not always easy to travel through.

How do I know? This is the second reason for my choice of release date.

You see, I’ve just returned from Wales, and oh, what a trip it was. We went to establish my daughter at university there, but we took time to tour around as well. I wanted to release my novel about this country while I was there. It just felt right.

More than once during our explorations, we found ourselves driving down painfully narrow lanes, barely wide enough for a single vehicle, with tall hedges or stone walls on either side, or through a tunnel of dense trees. It felt at times like driving through a maze.

Not my photo, but oh, this brings back memories… and a cold sweat!

If it’s like this now, in 2024, I can only imagine some of the lanes our favourite characters might have found themselves traversing back in 1811.

For fun, I’ve found a few quotations from the past about other travellers’ thoughts about Wales. Enjoy these.

Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) clearly liked a gentler landscape. He had some rather unhappy comments in Curious and diverting journies, thro’ the whole island of Great-Britain, 1724.

The mountains of Breconshire were ‘horrid…’
(My comment: these mountains are some of the most beautiful I’ve seen. We can’t always agree.)

In Glamorganshire:

‘We began to repent our curiosity, as not having met anything worth the trouble; and a country looking so full of horror that we thought to have given over the enterprise and have left Wales out of our circuit but after a day and night conversing thus with rocks and mountains, our guide brought us down to a most agreeable vale … called the Taff.

In Montgomeryshire:

‘We were so tired with rocks and mountains we wished heartily that we had kept close to the sea shore …’

Ah, poor Mr Defoe. Perhaps a desert island would be more to his liking.

Mary Yorke, nee Madocks, had a more poetic view of the land when she wrote to her sister-in-law Jemima around the year 1780. She was based in Llangollen, a town that Darcy and Elizabeth pass through in Pride and Pursuit.

Art is literally the Handmaid of nature. She indeed sometimes presents to our view a magnificent castle, but then it is dressed in so sober a hue, and with such profusion of Moss and Ivy, and placed upon some rising nole [sic] so naturally (if I may use the word) that Art seems modestly to resign the crumbling ruin to her mistress, and nature claims the whole scene for her own!

Over the next decades, as the sensibilities of Romanticism seeped into the ethos, the preference for gentle scenery over rugged majesty relaxes, and people began to appreciate dramatic landscapes more.

Lady Jane Crewe wrote this of the topography near Bangor, North Wales, in 1826.

The scenery was grand and magnificent in the extreme, enormous masses of rock seemed to have been thrown in wild confusion one upon another by an almighty hand – we could not help remarking how calculated such scenes were to raise our poor and low ideas of our creator’s powers and goodness.

And by the mid-1800, people positively raved about North Wales.

Here is what Louisa Costello write in the introduction to The Falls, Lakes and Mountains of North Wales in 1844.

It would seem as if …part of the country called The Principality had been created by nature, in a holiday humour, expressly for the recreation and delight of English Tourists, whose limited time did not allow them to seek for beauties abroad; for, collected into a small space, more that is graceful, beautiful and romantic, may be found in North Wales than in any other spot in Europe.

Artists had their say as well. Here is a view of Carnedd Llewelyn and Carnedd David, Carnarvonshire, Seen Across the River Ogwen, by John Warwick Smith, 1749–1831.

The same artist painting this landscape of Llyn Geirionedd not Far from Trefriew, on the River Conway, Carnarvonshire.

Richard Wilson (1714-1782) found inspiration in this vista of Dinas Bran from Llangollen, 1770 to 1771.

And here is a painting of Overshot Mill, North Wales, by David Cox (1783-1859).

I wonder what our dear couple would have thought of the wild and wonderful landscape they struggled through if they hadn’t been running for their lives. I suspect their thoughts changed considerably once they achieved their happy ending.

Enjoy this excerpt from Pride and Pursuit, wherein our intrepid adventures find their travels are a bit taxing.

~ Excerpt from Pride and Pursuit ~

The damp weather did little to brighten their spirits, and they fell into an argument before even leaving the inn. Will insisted upon Elizabeth riding in the cart under the tarpaulin, and she refused.

“You are a lady, and it is my obligation as a gentleman to keep you from harm.” He pulled himself to his full, rather impressive, height, and crossed his arms over his chest, glaring at her. She, in turn, straightened to her full and much less impressive height, and glared right back, craning her neck to do so.

“I am not some delicate flower that can withstand neither heat nor rain, Will. The weather is wet, not cold, and I am as able to survive it as are you.”

“No.” His face went cold and stony. “I will not have it. You must ride under the canopy. You will take ill.”

“And I will not be treated like a helpless incompetent. Coachmen and servants sit out in the rain all the time.”

“You are neither a coachman nor a servant.”

“And neither are you. Do we spend another night here and wait until the sun shines once more? Your Mr Wickham is unlikely to look this far from his estimation of our route.”

The icy scowl turned angry. “The longer we remain in one place, the greater the danger. We must ride, and in the wrong direction, at that.”

He was stubborn, this strange and proud man. Elizabeth felt a thread of pity for him, being forced into such a dire position as this. “Will…” She softened her voice and reached for his arm.

His eyes fluttered closed for a moment, and he let out a sigh. “Are you always this determined to have your own way?”

“Only when I am told what I should do for my own good.”

In the end, they reached a compromise, where Elizabeth sat right beside him on the bench, holding her umbrella over both of them. They draped an extra length of the tarpaulin over their shoulders for more protection and managed to stay relatively dry. If Dobbin objected to being the only one of the party fully exposed to the rain, he said not a word in complaint.

The roads grew narrower and rougher as they travelled, and villages fewer and fewer as the terrain became more and more hilly. It would become even worse once they found the tracks through central Wales, Will explained. At times, Dobbin slowed to a pace that a moderate walker could match with ease, and sometimes patches of mud almost brought the cart to a complete stop. They ate the last of the buns they had purchased at the inn under the canopy of the tarpaulin, and stopped only long enough for the horse to take rests when necessary.

Although they had departed the inn shortly after dawn, it was almost full night when they arrived at Abergavenny, both in low spirits and wanting nothing more than a hot meal and a quiet bed, without even the pretence of dismay at having to share a single room.

In another lifetime, Elizabeth would have loved to spend some time in the lively Welsh town. It was a charming place, gifted with beautiful scenery and friendly people, but now she could not wait to leave. The pretty high street with its interesting shops, the Mediaeval priory, and the old ruined castle would have to wait for another time.

Ooh! This is quite a new adventure! A murderous Wickham? A new country to explore? Darcy and Elizabeth forced to travel and stay together for protection? 

I’m so excited to read this story and see Regency Wales through their eyes! It seems both wonderfully charming and untamed! 

Thanks so much for sharing, Riana!

~~~

GIVEAWAY TIME!!!

In conjunction with her visit, Riana is giving away an ebook copy of Pride and Pursuit to 1️⃣ lucky reader!

To enter this giveaway leave a question, comment, or some love for Riana!

• This giveaway is open worldwide.  Thank you, Riana!
• This giveaway ends October 12th!