Maggie Humm
author of the Talland House
Maggie Humm is an Emeritus Professor, University of East London, UK, an international Virginia Woolf scholar and the author/editor of fourteen books. To transition to creative writing, she earned a Diploma in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia/Guardian. Talland House, She Writes Press, is Humm’s debut novel. Shortlisted for the Impress, Fresher Fiction, Retreat West, and Eyelands prizes and longlisted for the Lucy Cavendish and Historical Writers’ Association. The novel was chosen as one of 51 ‘Books of the Year’ 2020 by The Washington Independent Review of Books. She lives in London and is currently writing Rodin’s Mistress about the tumultuous love affair of the artists Gwen John and Auguste Rodin.
Me: Tell us about Talland House.
Maggie: Set between 1900 and 1919 in picturesque Cornwall and war-blasted London, Talland House takes the artist Lily Briscoe from the pages of Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse and tells her story, as a prequel and in the interstices of Woolf’s novel. Lily lives through one of the most momentous periods in UK history, falling in love with her artist tutor, becoming an independent woman artist, a suffragette, and a nurse in WW1. Mourning her dead mother, Lily loves her surrogate mother Mrs Ramsay while painting her portrait at Talland House. Later, finding out that Mrs Ramsay died unexpectedly, Lily must solve the mystery of the death. Virginia Woolf enjoyed the happiest summers of her life at Talland House, St Ives Cornwall until the death of her mother when Virginia was thirteen.
Me: What inspired you to write it?
Maggie: The novel has been with me since adolescence when I first read To the Lighthouse and fell in love with the mother character Mrs Ramsay. Mrs and Mr Ramsay are based on Woolf’s mother and father. My mother was forty-nine when she died, and I was thirteen, the same ages as Julia Stephen and Virginia, when Julia died, which I learned when becoming a Woolf scholar, and only then realising why To the Lighthouse had such an effect on me. I had to discover how Mrs. Ramsay died and wrote Who Killed Mrs Ramsay? the original title of Talland House.
Me: Describe your writing life.
Maggie: Before the pandemic, I had a routine; grappling with emails immediately (after a visit to the gym) so that these do not linger in my mind. Then two hours of writing/rewriting before lunch and two hours afterward (if I am lucky).
But during the lockdowns, my concentration is much diminished, so I have written shorter pieces (book reviews, blogs, essays) while still trying to keep alive my second novel Rodin’s Mistress. I write everything longhand first on the dining room table and then retreat to a tiny bedroom, duplicating as my office, to type. As a child we only had one main room for everything: eating/TV/homework/reading/pets/sewing clothes so I am used to interruptions.
Me: What surprised you most about your book’s journey?
Maggie: The sheer difficulty in keeping several plot lines (the love interest, the murder mystery, Lily’s development) interweaving throughout the novel and each coming to a satisfactory conclusion for the reader.
I was most surprised at how my heroine Lily came to resemble me, apparently a common feature of first novels. Lily gradually took over my life, my feelings, even my physical characteristics. She is always early for appointments, she is an only child with a dead mother, and her fingers are the shape of mine. Sometimes I wondered if I existed outside the novel!
Me: What are your future writing plans?
Maggie: My main aim is to complete the redrafting/restructuring of my second novel Rodin’s Mistress – another romance, historical novel.
Rodin’s Mistress tells of artist Gwen John’s tumultuous affair with the French sculptor Auguste Rodin and is set between London and Paris over two decades from 1897 to 1917, during one of the most exciting moments of modern art – and is the first novel about Gwen John.
Rodin’s Mistress shows Gwen becoming a modern painter and furthering the cause of female artists to be treated as equals by their male counterparts with so many resonances for today.
Website: Maggie Humm.
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