Interview with Elizabeth Hobbs

As an alumna of one of the Seven Sisters—Mount Holyoke, in my case—I was naturally drawn to this new mystery series featuring a Wellesley student living in the late 1800s. I also favor heroines who don’t sit on their hands but get out and make things happen, and Marigold Manners, the main character in these books, definitely falls into that category—and then some. Read on to find out more from my interview with the author, Elizabeth Hobbs, who also writes historical romance under the name Elizabeth Essex.

What can you tell us about Marigold Manners and how you came up with the idea to make her the heroine of a mystery series?

My first inspiration for Marigold came from a chance glimpse of an old illustrated Scribner’s Magazine cover.

I just thought: THESE GIRLS—I want to write a book about these girls. Look at them, so self-possessed and academic and casually athletic. They are everything Anne Shirley, the puffed sleeve-loving heroine of my teenaged favorite Anne of Green Gables stories, would have wanted to be. I even thought of giving my protagonist the name of Miss Goodloe, from the illustration, but the name Marigold Manners popped into my head and started talking, so I just started writing. I rather loosely based her on the real-life Classics scholar Edith Hamilton, but also decided that Marigold would want the active life of a field archaeologist (which I also was in my academic youth!). I thought perhaps I could make her my own American version of the much-loved character of Amelia Peabody, from Barbara Michael’s historical mystery series, written under the pen name Elizabeth Peters. The minute I decided to set the story in New England and give it a chilly, gothic, seacoast vibe, the dead bodies started showing up. So, a historical mystery just fit the story and the intellectual curiosity of the character perfectly.

At the beginning of Misery Hates Company, Marigold has suffered a great upheaval in her life. Tell us about her parents and what has happened to them—and, by extension, to her.

Marigold’s poor, unfortunate parents have recently passed away from one of the many influenza epidemics that routinely swept the globe in the days before immunizations. Although both her parents were from wealthy, old New England families, they were absolute spendthrifts. As my own Bostonian grandmother used to say, “Every once in a while, even the best-bred horses slip their traces.” Marigold puts it like this: “She had been a child when she had first understood what the leaking mansions and hasty departures from hotels had really meant—her beloved parents were absolute fools with money. Still, she had admired their verve, if not their unsound personal fiscal practices.”

I wrote Esmé and Harry Manners to be a cautionary tale of irresponsible entitlement, so Marigold would learn to be the opposite. Their demise has left Marigold virtually penniless, setting off the action of Misery Hates Company.

Her friend, Isabella Dana, wants to help, but Marigold refuses. Why, and what does that tell us about her?

The character of Isabella Dana was created to be everything Marigold thinks she is at the start of the story—independent and unbothered by the mundane concerns about money. But when the unthinkable happens, Marigold is nothing if not extraordinarily principled. She is a “New Woman” of the 1890’s who was characterized as independent and educated, as well as physically active, and who challenged the dominant Victorian era values that prized domesticity over any other kind of life. At this point in Marigold’s life, she has already established her independence by going to Wellesley College, so it made sense that she would want to continue on as independently as possible in her new, reduced circumstances, when she must leave college.

What causes Marigold to choose, from the various options available to her, a trip to Great Misery Island?

She chooses Great Misery Island and the Hatchett family because her older Cousin Sophronia Hatchett teases her with a great mystery of an unknown wrong done to Marigold’s mother. Marigold, with her curiosity and intellect, simply cannot let the question of the great wrong go unanswered. She views the invitation as a challenge—one she would not get by staying comfortably with Isabella in Boston. She also hopes that the visit to her relations on Great Misery will return her fortune—and with it her access to education. So off she sets.

And how does Marigold respond to that initial situation?

Marigold prides herself on her self-confidence, poise and practicality. So, when Great Misery Island and the Hatchett family, turn out to be nothing like she expected, she chooses to adapt, while staying true to her principles. She does that by immediately being as practical and useful as possible, trying to win the Hatchetts to her trust. Marigold is just not a quitter.

Tell us a bit about Cab Cox, please.

I set out to make the character of Jonothan Cabot Cox the epitome of everything Marigold took for granted in her life—wealth, privilege, education, and accomplishment. He is what she sees in the mirror of her own mind, with the exception being that he is a man. I also wanted there to be no impediment to the two of them having a relationship—that is, no impediment but Marigold’s own choices, which I wanted to have equal weight to their mutual attraction. And their attraction is very mutual!

The murder in the first book is spotlighted right away, but it doesn’t occur until so late in the book that I hesitate to ask about it. What would you like readers to know?

There is a first murder very early in Misery Hates Company—Marigold’s perhaps imagined sight of the drowned woman—that really sets the stage for the later murder at the center of the plot. But I set that second murder later to give the reader a greater sense of the characters and to heighten the question, is Marigold imagining and exaggerating these strange happenings or not? Once the second murder is discovered, that question is answered, but then the reader moves on to the question of who done it—or in the case of Misery Hates Company, who didn’t do it?

Please set the scene for the second book, Murder Made Her Wicked. Where is Marigold at this point in her life?

In Murder Made Her Wicked, Marigold has left Great Misery Island and returned to “normal life” and her beloved education at Wellesley College. But the return to normal ends the moment she sees another drowned body in the college’s lake and literally plunges in to the mystery. Marigold wants to hope that this girl has drowned by simple mischance, but her own experience, curiosity, and knowledge of Wellesley—where physical education, including swimming, is part of every undergraduate woman’s course of study—immediately makes her look for signs of foul play. And with her acute, observational archaeologist’s eye for detail, there are plenty of signs that convince her that it is murder.

Are you penning more adventures for Marigold, or are you already working on something else?

I am definitely penning more adventures for Marigold! I don’t know if they will be picked up by my publisher yet, but I’m very hopeful and still deeply invested in telling more stories about Marigold, Cab, Isabella, Lucy, and the other characters who make up Marigold’s found family. (As we speak, Marigold is on her way across the Atlantic Ocean, heading for Greece, where she will take up her Fellowship at the American School of Classical Studies … I feel certain malice and murder will follow her wherever she goes! In fact, I’m calling it Meridian of Malice.)

Elizabeth Hobbs is the author of The Marigold Manners Mysteries, two of which—Misery Hates Company and Murder Made Her Wicked—are now in print. She also writes historical romance under the name Elizabeth Essex. Find out more about her and her books at https://www.elizabethhobbsauthor.com and https://www.elizabethessex.com.

Photograph of Elizabeth Hobbs © Kelly Williams Photography. Reproduced with permission.