Habits of the House

October 15, 2012
This first installment of Weldon’s late-Victorian trilogy centers on the Dilberne family, a titled albeit impoverished British house. The earl makes poor business decisions and continually runs up debts gambling with the Prince of Wales. Resolving to restore the family fortunes, he decides the clearest way to do this is to marry off his children. He sets upon son Arthur and, with the help of the household servants, locates a wealthy Chicago heiress, Minnie O’Brien. However, as the young couple start learning about each other, they realize that they both carry secrets that could ruin the engagement and their prospects. Weldon introduces several characters, both upper class and lower class, and in many ways the whole book feels expository because it lacks high-stakes drama. However, it succeeds as an opening to a new series and should entice enough to make it worth checking out the subsequent installments. Agent: Georgina Capel, Capel & Land Ltd.

October 15, 2012
Prolific Weldon borrows heavily from both Downton Abbey and Upstairs Downstairs in her first in a series of three novels about Edwardian Britain, all to come out within the next year. Weldon begins her novel over 10 years earlier than the two TV series, but the dramatic elements are the same: a wealthy family and its servants (although they get short shrift here) reacting to social, economic and political changes. In 1899, Victoria is an aging queen, her son the Prince of Wales is a philandering gambler, and the second Boer War is about to break out in southern Africa. At 17 Belgrave Square, Robert Hedleigh, the Earl of Dilberne, has an unexpected visit from his Jewish banker, Mr. Baum. Mr. Baum has lent the earl quite a bit of money, but Lady Isobel balks at extending a social invitation to Mrs. Baum in return. Now, Mr. Baum explains that the Boer situation has ruined the earl's African mining investments. The family faces a potential financial crisis that is unlikely to be solved by the earl's gambling forays with the Prince of Wales. Since suffragette daughter Rosina seems unmarriageable, Lady Isobel--well aware that the earl married her for her father's money--sets out to find a rich wife for son Arthur, whose current love interests are his steam-engine automobile and the buxom blonde whose rent he pays, unaware that she was kept by his father before him. With the aid of lady's maid Grace, who has her own romantic history with Arthur, Lady Isobel turns up Minnie O'Brien, a meatpacking heiress from Chicago recently arrived in London with her loudly American mother. Minnie is charming as well as rich; even Grace finds herself won over. But Minnie has her own secrets. Will love and Minnie's money combine to save the household or will scandal wreak havoc? If this all sounds more than a little familiar, it is.

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August 1, 2012

First in a trilogy, Weldon's new work opens in 1899 with the Earl of Dilberne eager to marry off his son to an heiress to stave off serious financial difficulty after a bad stock-market gamble. Rich, gorgeous Minnie from Chicago is the target. (Sounds as if we are in Edith Wharton territory.) Billed as an enticing Downton Abbey prequel; a big blog/bookclub campaign

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October 1, 2012
Before there was Downton Abbey, there was Upstairs, Downstairs, and, having written the first episode of that iconic television series, it is only fitting that Weldon now returns to the scene of the crime to further explore the disparate worlds of them that has and those what serve 'em. On the brink of the twentieth century, all is not well in the House of Dilberne. The earl has gambled away most of his patrimony and lost the remainder in an ill-timed investment. Inspired by his own fortuitous marriage to Isobel, daughter of a wealthy coal baron, his lordship's only hope of saving the family bacon is to marry his son, Arthur, off to the daughter of an American businessman. What with Arthur's predilection for a local trollop and preoccupation with experimental automobiles, this won't be an easy task. Luckily, there's a mansion's worth of dubiously loyal maids, butlers, and cooks to conduct vital backroom negotiations. Always a ripe target for mockery and disdain, the British aristocracy comes in for a thorough drubbing in Weldon's snarky send-up. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The first novel in beloved British writer Weldon's new series launches with a hefty print run and all-out national marketing campaign carrying the banner, Poised for Bestsellerdom. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)