Author Elizabeth Lee talks to us about her debut novel Cunning Women and how it was inspired by folk magic in Early Modern history.
Elizabeth Lee has been writing for a number of years and her work was selected for the Womentoring Project and Penguin's WriteNow Live. In 2018 she was awarded the Marian Keyes Scholarship to study on Curtis Brown Creative's novel writing course.
Cunning Women is Elizabeth's debut novel. Set in 17th Century Lancashire, it is the story of Sarah, her struggle against poverty and prejudice, and her defiant hope for a better life. Cunning Women was published by Penguin Books in March in paperback. It has also been chosen as a Suffolk Loves quick choice title available from our libraries.
I’m not really sure I had heroes as such, although if I did they were probably characters in a book! I started writing very young, I remember stapling paper together to make little books and writing some truly terrible poetry in them (even for a six year old). They’re still around somewhere, and my mum has been known to find them when the family gets together and read them to everyone!
So many interesting and strange details! That cunning folk often used prayers in their work, for example, and that red and white flowers next to each other were thought to be a sign of a death. There was also a lot of competitiveness between rival cunning folk, to the point where they would accuse each other of dabbling in dark magic.
It’s set in 17th Century Lancashire and is essentially a love story between Sarah, daughter of the local cunning woman, and Daniel, a farmer’s son. But a zealous new magistrate arrives in the village, determined to root out sinners, and when a terrible, brutal event takes place his attention turns to Sarah’s family. She is forced to reckon with her fate, and try to save all that she holds dear.
I was inspired to write Cunning Women after I watched a documentary about the Pendle witch trials. I was especially moved by the plight of the family involved, and the terrible position they were in of being desperately poor and vulnerable, but also considered to have great power.
Thinking about this gave me the character of Sarah, and the story flowed from her, really. So I think Sarah’s voice was quite strong in my mind from the very beginning, as she was the catalyst for the whole book. And of course, the more you write and the more time you spend with the characters, the stronger their voices become, so by the end I had a very strong sense of both of them.
Thank you! I’ve been incredibly lucky with both the hardback and the paperback cover, they’re both beautiful. But I can take no credit at all! The publisher kindly showed me early plans for the cover and asked my opinion, but of course, I was thrilled and had nothing to say.
It’s still historical fiction, and explores similar themes to Cunning Women. But the setting, characters and story are quite different!
It’s so hard to pin it down to one! I can only say that I think everyone reads one book that has a great affect on them, usually when they’re quite young. For me, that was William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, which I read in two days when I was fourteen. I’m not sure I’ve ever been the same since!
There have been so many, it’s difficult to choose the best! Finding a brilliant agent who really understood what I was trying to do with the book was very exciting. And of course, not much beats seeing your book for the first time!
To take writing seriously, and make time for it.
When I was a child I had a pet chicken. She was called Gubbins and followed me up the road when I walked the dog. And once tried to get on the school bus with me.
