Historical romcom novelist Hannah Dolby dedicates her debut No Life For A Lady – launched in time for Mothers’ Day – to her 82-year-old artist mum Ann Grace Hughes; her “first source of joy, creativity and laughter”.
Edinburgh-born Dolby, 50, had put her passion for the written word on a back burner because of her busy career in public relations working with organisations like the Chelsea Flower Show, Buckingham and Holyrood palaces, National Museums of Scotland and currently the National Lottery.
It took lockdown and landing the runner-up prize in the coveted 2021 Comedy Women In Print Awards to make her first novel – a chuckle-inducing romp through Victorian society and the restrictions foisted on women and girls – to scoop her own literary lotto. The win led Dolby, who trained as a journalist before her move into PR, to land an agent and a two-book publishing deal.
No Life For A Lady is an absorbing exploration of female agency during the period but delivered with a captivating lightness of touch.
Introducing one of the most joyful reads of 2023, @LadyDolby's No Life For a Lady 🎉 This delightfully quirky debut set in 1896 follows Violet Hamilton as she finds endlessly inventive new ways to rebuff suitors, pre-order here: https://t.co/c678mn5cBQ pic.twitter.com/4TxSt40Ruq
— Waterstones (@Waterstones) September 2, 2022
Cue Violet Hamilton, 28, a woman who knows her own mind, which in 1896, when men ruled the roost, makes life difficult. Her father wants her to marry, but Violet is not the marrying kind with no idea about sex. The mother who could have guided her, Lily, disappeared a decade earlier. Desperate to find her, Violet hires a detective in a move that is to change her life.
Dolby, who left Edinburgh 10 years ago to work in London, tells P.S: “Work has always dominated and it wasn’t until lockdown, when I didn’t have a daily commute that I realised I had a bit of extra time and energy to write. Violet came about because, in the Victorian books you read – even those written by women – you get a filtered view of how women thought they should present themselves. But I felt that they were not much different from women now apart from the challenges and restrictions they faced, so I wanted a character who could speak with honesty.”
She adds: “My first attempt saw Violet already married and having a grim time. I envisaged it would be literary, important, seminal. “Then I spotted the Comedy Women in Print Awards and I realised she could have fun and adventures. It was a light bulb moment.”
Dolby, who rewrote the entire novel in about two weeks to make the awards deadline, is now working on a sequel. She says her research revealed that, until the 1930s and the arrival of the first sex manual for women by Edinburgh’s Marie Stopes in 1930, there was no information available to unmarried Victorian women. “There is humour and a lot of material you can draw from that,” Dolby adds.
Her novel is a love-letter to mothers present or absent. She says: “Mothers are often there for you and not always championed in the way they should be. Although Violet’s mother isn’t perfect, I hope this book reflects the importance of what happens when your mother is not there to guide you in life. It’s recognition too that a mother is her own person with her own wishes and desires, and in the past that has not always been acknowledged. It gave me a lot of joy to write it and I hope it brings joy to others.”
Hannah Dolby – No Life For A Lady, Aria, £16.99
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