Karen's Research

Dear Lynn,

I am definitely a research freak. I'm the sort of writer who thinks that if she doesn't know everything, she doesn't know anything. I first saw the Elgin Marbles in 2000 at the British Museum when I went to see an exhibit there about Cleopatra. I was researching my novel Kleopatra and I wandered into the Duveen Gallery where the marbles are housed. I listened to the story behind the marbles on the audio guide and had an intuition that it would be good fodder for a novel. When Susan Nagel's biography came out in 2004, I eagerly read it and was blown away by Mary's contribution to the acquisition of the treasures, and also by the absence of references to her in the sources. I thought, hmmm, another woman who defied society's idea of how a woman should behave and paid a steep price for it—and was forgotten. I got very excited about writing about her. My brilliant agent called me one day around that time and said that she'd read a review of a new biography about the Countess of Elgin, and didn't she sound like one of my heroines? I said, sister, I'm already on board!

I have not met Susan Nagel, but we have corresponded a bit by email. I've sent her an advance reading copy of the book. I hope she feels that I did Mary justice! I do think that scholarship and fiction work together often in this way. A scholar brings new understanding to something from the past, and the fiction writer or dramatist is inspired to try to popularize it. It's common knowledge that Shakespeare wrote with a copy of Plutarch open on his desk (so do I!).

I cannot explain how I decided to incorporate Aspasia's story into the narrative. I guess I just wanted to make my life a lot harder! I have long held an interest in Aspasia, and one day while I was lying on the floor, the idea to have Aspasia watch the Parthenon go up and have Mary watch it come down just descended upon me. I suppose that I love the classical Greek world above all time periods and feel very comfortable writing in that space.

Stealing Athena was difficult to write simply because of the enormity of the research. It was crucial for me to understand the Ottoman Empire, the British Empire, Napoleon, the Golden Age of Pericles, and all the ensuing cultural studies that would have impacted the people in those civilizations and epochs. I have posted a selected bibliography on my website. Additionally of interest might be an email interview I did with a class at University of North Carolina who were studying my book Leonardo's Swans in which I explain my research process. Please encourage your students to check out the resources on http://www.karenessex.com/ and sign up for my newsletter. I'm launching a newly designed site at the end of this month with loads of additional content on Stealing Athena and new resources. The interview is on the "Classroom" page. http://www.karenessex.com/classroom.html.

My best,
Karen Essex