Bee Rowlatt bends genres in her roving work, which traverses the globe with Mary Wollstonecraft and forges friendship over the span of a continent with collaborator May Witwit. A writer and a journalist who has written for publications including The Independent, The Telegraph, The Guardian, and BBC Online, her interests and ideas, especially as they appear to us in her books, are as far-ranging as they are emotionally resonant. While speaking with us at the Jaipur Literature Festival, Rowlatt considered the promises and the pulls of her two bestselling books, as well as the process of their composition, before and after the act of writing.
Talking About Jane Austen is a series of exchanges with an academic, then in Iraq, May Witwit, that began unpredictably and spontaneously, sharing the specificities and abstractions of their lives that their friendship, as they find out, transcends. In In Search of Mary, Bee brings alive Mary Wollstonecraft’s own journey across Europe, retracing the feminist icon’s footsteps in what could be called an experiment in biographical embodiment. Excerpts from an interview with Scroll:
Thank you so much for speaking with us. We thought we’d frame this interview around your two works of non-fiction, striking and strikingly different. Talking about Jane Austen in Baghdad is a compilation of emails, and In Search of Mary is difficult to even define: par travelogue, part biography of Mary Wollstonecraft, part something else altogether. Neither of these is a conventional genre, one with readymade steps of entry and pursuit and exit. What was your experience in trying to frame these projects? And did you have difficulties getting it published?
You’re right that while both works are non-fiction, they are very different in structure and intention. It's my experience that many writers have a strained experience with genres and the idea of making your book “fit”. It informs the dreaded marketing phase which all comes down to how a book will be presented on sale. If this is not immediately obvious, then publishers can be reluctant to take on a book in the first place. The Wollstonecraft book was harder to place for this reason, I think – people weren’t sure what it was. I’m still not quite sure what it was.
What were the possibilities that these genres opened up which otherwise could not have been?
Talking About Jane Austen in Baghdad is a straightforward epistolary exchange. It also works as a form of reportage: certainly from May Witwit’s side, it is an account of life under warfare and occupation, and her transition into being a refugee. This is a universal story that sadly never gets old. Both non-fiction and fiction have a role in humanising people caught up in the news stories that horrify us daily. When I was young I was deeply influenced by Erich Maria Remarque’s Flotsam, published in 1939. His account of refugees and how they’re viewed and treated has never left me.
As for In Search of Mary, this was much harder to capture genre-wise. It’s not a biography as such but I like to call it an immersive biographical experiment. I was inspired by the biographer Richard Holmes’ writing on Shelley and the Romantics, in particular his book Footsteps. But as you mention, In Search of Mary is also a travelogue and a memoir. So which shelf does this occupy in the bookshop? I don’t know, I used to roam around various bookshop departments before finding it somewhere like History or Adventure. But luckily this never stopped it from finding its readers.
Tell us when you began to conceptualise these two books. We heard that Talking About Jane Austen happened along the way. What about In Search of Mary? Did you know it would be a book before you set off? Or was it in the middle of the experience? Or after it was all over? And that matters also because knowing that this event would be a book would affect your experience of the journey.
Talking About Jane Austen was never meant to be a book; it was purely a means to an end. My friend May needed to escape a war zone, and after many failed attempts this was the possibility that presented itself. We clung to it like a life raft. The book consists of our emails throughout the whole tale, including discussions that neither of us wanted to make public. But they were part of the story, warts and all.
It was very different with In Search of Mary. This grew organically and shaped itself out of a life-long fascination with this extraordinary woman who deeply influenced so many famous writers and thinkers. I knew from the outset that it was a book, but I was not sure how it would work. As an experiment in biographical immersion, it also tackled the experience of travelling and writing with a baby in tow (Wollstonecraft undertook a Scandinavian treasure hunt in 1795 with her baby, I retraced her steps with my own). This part was quite light-hearted. In contrast, another spur for the writing was the realisation that Mary Wollstonecraft had been annihilated from history; for me, it was an injustice that people weren’t aware of her incredible story.
We’re very interested in the title: Talking About Jane Austen in Baghdad. Why did you choose to centre Jane Austen in your title? May, we know, was teaching Pride & Prejudice at a certain point when you were email-ing, but there were so many details and intimacies you exchanged. So what led to Jane Austen being highlighted?
The truth? The publishers told us to call it that. They said: do you want it to sell, or not? And at the time it was a matter of funding May’s escape from Iraq. So we agreed, even though it was a slightly derivative and awkward title. Maybe they were right though, because it did sell. A lot! But ever since I’ve had to respond to complaints that there isn’t enough Jane Austen, which is fair enough. Maybe we should add a content warning: Insufficient Levels of Austen.
Of course, we can’t say that about the other book. What did it mean to you, to choose to follow Mary Wollstonecraft on her journey? One could call it a pilgrimage of sorts. When you set off on it, how were you describing the pursuit and your motivations in your mind?
When I set off I had two motivations. One was to illuminate the life of Mary Wollstonecraft by retracing her adventures, and lowering the bar to entry so anyone could access her work, not just students of Enlightenment philosophy. The second was to have a brilliant adventure of my own and escape my responsibilities (I have four children) while testing the boundaries of motherhood and the impact it has on a creative life. An exploration of Wollstonecraft’s feminist legacy underpinned both of these. Bringing the baby with me compounded that sense of, in Vita Sackville West’s words, “clapping the net over the butterfly of the moment,” that is, it captured fleeting childhood moments that are usually lost. This was unanticipated and exquisitely precious.
Indeed, In Search of Mary features your child – literally on your back with you through the journey. How do you think your relationship with the child was influenced by the journey?
He drove me nuts, of course, but there was a lot of beauty in the chaos. He was a lively 11-month-old toddler, so I’ll let you imagine what a reasonable travel companion that wasn’t. But at times it was extremely funny, even if it took much longer to get writing and research done. And there was beauty in how people opened up their homes and hearts to us, in ways that would not happen to a solo traveller.
We were curious about the influence of your compatriot in writing, May. How did her views and ideas affect or influence yours? And a more specific question of interest because of our own interests: May speaks occasionally about what teaching human rights and literature means when in Baghdad. What did you make of that project?
I’m embarrassed by how ignorant I was of Iraqi culture and religion when May and I first began our correspondence. I would ask stupid questions, which May answered with good humour. We kept these in because they are typical of assumptions that many people make – we are all works in progress. As to the question of the teaching of human rights and literature, the study of literature is a universal endeavour and is, in my opinion, the most civilised thing a human can do. I sense that your question suggests a feeling of surprise that May taught about human rights and literature in Baghdad, but all lovers of literature everywhere share that openness and curiosity. Her students’ responses were very touching. It was wonderful to connect over common literary ground, despite the many differences in our lives.
Writing is often thought of as a way to enter another world. Even as both your works, in one or the other way, let you enter the world of another in an unexpected way, you weave your presence strongly into the life of the other too. What does this strong presence of “self” do to the narrative?
If you don’t mind I will fail to answer this question, as it’s tricky to reflect on my “self” like this and I am in danger of saying something pretentious. Considering your presence on the page is a bit like hearing your own voice in a recorded interview – and no one enjoys that!
We hear that you have a debut novel coming out. Tell us about this transition to fiction. What compelled you towards it? How different is the process of writing – and your relationship to it – from your previous works?
My next book is called One Woman Crime Wave and it is from the point of view of a teenage girl who can’t stop stealing. The story compelled itself by the inequalities in my own London neighbourhood, and the double standards of people who consider themselves progressives. It also challenges the idea that being a parent makes you a better person, as well as channelling my own teenage memories. Teenage girls are possessed of a particular energy; of rage and vulnerability combined, and I find that very powerful.
Writing fiction has beaten me up so hard I doubt I’ll go there again. One Woman Crime Wave was hard in ways that surprised me and took an embarrassing number of years to finish. Maybe it’s because I spent so many years as a journalist, and then working in non-fiction, that I couldn’t handle the boundless freedom. It was paralysing to me to be able to kill a character, and then unkill them. I went round and round and round. Let me tell you, fiction is not for lightweights! (I’m already at work on the next non-fiction, what a relief. The writing is like slipping back into your favourite boots.)
Bee Rowlatt is available on Instagram.