Upcoming Events

We look forward to welcoming Author Catherine Cliff on Wednesday, October 7, at 7 pm, in our Program Room, Radcliffe Children’s Library, Perrot Memorial Library. Catherine will discuss her new book, Miss Bates, in conversation with Historical Novelist Brigitte Dale, author of The Good Daughters. Copies of Ms. Cliff’s book will be available for signing and sales at the program.

Catherine’s new book is a daring re-imagining of an Austen classic from the unflinching viewpoint of the misunderstood Miss Bates. Henrietta Bates, the iconic bore of Austen’s Emma, is the opposite of handsome, clever, and rich Emma: She is plain, ill-educated, and impoverished. An unmarried woman of quite a different order from that novel’s proudly single heroine, she is an object of scorn and pity, whose survival depends upon the generosity of her neighbors which she barters for with an unrelenting shower of banal and grateful chatter. But what if the woman we see in Emma were actually deliberately assuming a role, donning a mask, as a means of managing an untenable situation? What if there was a world of difference between her inward and outward voice? What would the Woodhouses’ Highbury look like from her perspective? Miss Bates by Catherine Cliff imagines answers to these questions as it chronicles Henrietta Bates’s unexpected and, at times, violent life, navigating a world with no ready-made opportunities, where the stakes are of the highest order. In a debut that is by turns comedic, tragic, startling, and altogether brilliant, Miss Bates turns Austen’s poignant and ridiculous side character into a feminist force who understands innately the life she has been dealt and how to slyly play it to her advantage. This is no marriage plot; it is a spinster plot. Or maybe, the spinster’s plot.

The New York Times praised Ms. Cliff’s book, stating, “The delicious premise of Cliff’s Miss Bates is that the boring, endlessly loquacious spinster of Jane Austen’s novel harbors unsuspected depths of emotion and cunning. Will Miss Bates manage to turn the miserable hand life has dealt her into a winning one? It wouldn’t be wise to bet against her.

Catherine Cliff grew up in New York City. She has a BA in Classics and English from Harvard University and a doctorate in English literature from Yale, specializing in English Renaissance poetry. She lived in London and Basel for many years and is now settled in western Massachusetts. This is her first novel. For more information on Catherine, visit her website.

Brigitte Dale is an author, editor, and historian. She graduated from Brown University and earned her master’s degree in women’s history at Yale University. A book editor by day and a author by night (or early morning), Brigitte lives in Connecticut. The Good Daughters is her first novel.

Registration is required. To register, click here.

For more information on this program, please call us at 203-637-1066 or email us at adultprogramming@perrotlibrary.org.