SEASIDE STORIES

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My latest novella in trade paperback and/or e-book format is The Muddled Matchmakers, set in Weymouth, Dorset.
      In the story, widow Dawn Neville and widower Hugh, Lord Grayson, devote their lives to their small children. When their elderly fathers conspire to bring them together at the Weymouth seaside, Dawn and Hugh agree to pretend compliance with the matchmakers’ objective. But their pretense just might diminish sad memories and inspire a fresh promise of a loving future together.

Weymouth was a favorite spa for the Royals. King George III, his brothers, and his children often came for recreation. First presented in Kensington Zebra’s Father’s Day Anthology A Match For Papa in 2003, The Muddled Matchmakers tells the story of a summer stay in Weymouth. 

        Jane Austen mentions many seaside resorts in her novels and letters. Darcy’s young sister Georgiana in Pride and Prejudice is almost seduced by George Wickham in Ramsgate, Kent. Lydia Bennet indeed is carried off from Brighton by that same miscreant, though one can say he receives his just desserts by having her company for the rest of his life. Beware the  temptations of the seaside! True as well for Lyme Regis in Mansfield Park. 

     The Austen family often journeyed to the seaside, visiting places such as Sidmouth, Teignmouth, and Dawlish. In the fragment of a novel Austen left unfinished at her death at age 41 in 1817, we find the story of Sanditon, a village being transformed into a resort for the amusement of city dwellers. 

Sanditon was used as the basis of a television series in 2020 with screenplays by Andrew Davies and others, which went a long way off from Jane Austen's fragment. Whether or not the series will be continued is not known yet. I guess it was not enthusiastically received on either wide of the pond.

      I chose Worthing, in Sussex, as the setting for two of my novellas in the Regency Summer Anthologies in 2019 and 2020 published by Dreamstone Publishing. Like other coastal resort towns, the beach held many bathing machines for the ladies, donkeys to be ridden by the children, and promenades bordered by colorful gardens. The towns boasted churches, hotels, shops, tea rooms, even some theatres and assembly rooms. Below, the covers for the stories flank one of the anthology covers. Click on the thumbnail for larger pictures.

 Below, summer 2020 from the BBC.    Tourism grew during the Georgian era and rapidly expanded with the coming of the railroads in the early Victorian years. Today, British beaches resorts are as popular as ever, with their long piers dotted with shops, restaurants and carnival-type rides, and rows of rainbow-hued beach huts. Today,  the therapeutic concerns of drinking sea-water and immersing oneself in cold saltwater are no longer the attraction. But as an island nation it is no surprise that the seashore is always popular. Below, Summer 2020 from the BBC.