Patronage – BooksPlease

Every Friday Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Gillion at Rose City Reader where you can share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading. You can also share from a book you want to highlight just because it caught your fancy.

I’m featuring Patronage by Maria Edgeworth. This is one of my TBRs and I meant to include it in my Top Ten Tuesday post this week. Maria Edgeworth (1768 – 1849) was a contemporary of Jane Austen, publishing novels at the same time – Patronage was published just 5 months before Mansfield Park in 1814.

From the back cover:

Patronage was one of the most eagerly anticipated novels of Jane Austen’s day. It sold out within hours of publication.… an adventurous soap opera about the trials and fortunes of two neighbouring families in Regency England, both of which had sons and daughters setting out in the world. … a bright and mischievous critique of the way young men gained careers and young women gained husbands.

It begins:

‘How the wind is rising!’ said Rosamond. ‘God help the poor people at sea tonight!’

Also every Friday there is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice, but she is taking a break and Anne at My Head is Full of Books has taken on hosting duties in her absence. You grab a book and turn to page 56 (or 56% of an eBook), find one or more interesting sentences (no spoilers), and post them.

‘I hope, with all my heart, I hope,’ continued Rosamond, that Buckhurst will have some sense and steadfastness to refuse, but I heard his father supporting that foolish Colonel Hauton’s persuasions and urging his poor son to go with those people to Cheltenham.

Description from the publisher:

Meet the Percys and Falconers, neighbouring families, each with three sons and two daughters to launch into Regency society. The hardworking, independently minded and dutiful Percys are happy to work their way up in the world but are undermined by their scheming rivals who use Patronage to grab at instant fame and fortune. With their sons eased into lucrative but ill-suited diplomatic and clerical jobs, and their daughters bankrupting themselves to scale the heights of fashion, the Falconers are heading for a tumble; while the moral steadiness and strong family ties of the Percys allow them to attain both the heights of their chosen professions and a glittering match.

New in today is Patronage by Maria Edgeworth, thanks to the publishers Sort of Books.

Maria Edgeworth (1768 – 1849) was a contemporary of Jane Austen, publishing novels at the same time – Patronage was published just 5 months before Mansfield Park in 1814. It will be a while before I read this book, which is to be published on 6 July 2011, because there are already quite a few in my reading queue. But it does look interesting, described as

… one of the most eagerly anticipated novels of Jane Austen’s day. It sold out within hours of publication.

… an adventurous soap opera about the trials and fortunes of two neighbouring families in Regency England, both of which had sons and daughters setting out in the world. … a bright and mischievous critique of the way young men gained careers and young women gained husbands. (from the back cover)

I might just have to bump it up the list.

I also received newbooks magazine a few days ago. This has all sorts of book news, interviews and articles, plus lots of reviews and extracts from six novels – you can choose one for just the cost of p&p. This issue the free books are:

Tony & Susan by Austin Wright, his fourth and overlooked novel, originally published in 1993, about a divorced couple. Tony asks Susan to read the manuscript of his first novel.
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender, about the link between food and our emotions.
Outside the Ordinary World by Dori Ostermiller, in which Sylvia finds herself following in her mother’s footsteps into an affair she feels powerless to resist.
Drums on the Night Air: a Woman’s Flight from Africa’s Heart of Darkness by Veronica Cecil, set in the Congo in the early 1960s as civil war breaks out.
Collusion by Stuart Neville, a crime novel featuring DI Jack Lennon caught up in a web of official secrets and lies as he tries to find the whereabouts of his daughter.
The Collaborator by Margaret Leroy, in which Vivienne decides to escape from Guernsey to England in June 1940, as the German invasion is threatened, but stays and finds herself in danger.

Tony & Susan looks interesting, as does Drums on the Night Air, but I think I’m going to get The Collaborator.