Kaye Jones

I am very pleased to be at th e  final stage of completing my book on Christiana Edmunds. It has taken around 2 years to get  here and it has been emoti onal, to say the least!   B ut ,  now that I'm finally here (hooray!), I thought I'd share a few tips  on getting your book done, without having a complete and total mental breakdown.      If you feel overwhelmed by the prospect of writing 60, 000 words, break it down into chapters. For Christiana, I set every chapter a minimum word count of 4000 words and worked on them one at a time. That way, writing the book felt like writing lots of essays, not like one mammoth piece of work.    Keep a written record of every source you consult – whether you use them in your book or not. It helps to arrange them by theme, too. You will want to murder someone if,  ever  time you need to check a fact or date, you have to go rifling through your web histo...

I recently read a fabulous article by Nell Darby about the dangers of glorifying history's criminals (check it out   here ) and it really got me thinking about my book on Christiana Edmunds. By writing about her, am I glorifying her crimes? Am I trivialising the horrible things she did? It's an important and often over-looked question, I think.     When I was first approached to write this book, it was clear that the publishers were looking for something sensational. They wanted a book that would capture the public's imagination, so I duly set about scouring the newspapers of the 19th century in search of shocking, though less well-known, crimes. I think I succeeded in my aim but, in writing a book that is deliberately sensational, I can't help but wonder if I am guilty of feeding the public's obsession with the "celebrity" criminal. But, even if I am, is that such a bad thing?    Before I answer that, let's get something clear from the beginn...

This week, I was interviewed by the lovely Rachel, aka the History Magpie about my new book, the Case of the Chocolate Cream Killer. Here's the full text: Hello Kaye, thanks so much for stopping by. How did you find out about Christiana Edmunds and what made you want to write about her? I found about her by accident, really. I was reading a newspaper article about another case when I saw the headline ‘The Brighton Lady Poisoner’ on the same page. Intrigued, I read the excerpt from her trial and immediately wanted to know more. I was already in talks with Pen and Sword about a book commission so I pitched her story and, fortunately for me, they were equally fascinated with the case. In a recent blog post you mention that Christiana was born in Margate and grew up in Canterbury – can you tell us about her family life? Yes, Christiana was born in Margate in 1828. She was the oldest child of William Edmunds, a locally-renowned and very successful architect, who designed St Joh...

Here's a post that I wrote recently for the Women's History Network (see the original,  here ):   The Victorians were terrified of women poisoners. It might seem like an obvious observation; after all, who wouldn't   be frightened of a poison-wielding woman? But there’s more to this relationship than self-preservation. In fact, the fear of the female was a social construction, brought into being by contemporary understandings of gender roles, particularly cultures of domesticity, and a deep-rooted suspicion of the  so-called female nature. The wide availability of a range of poisons also fed the Victorian imagination. While legislative attempts to curtail the sale of poisons were enacted, in 1851 and again in 1868, they did little to affect women’s access to poison, as shown most famously in the case of Christiana Edmunds, the Chocolate Cream Killer, who terrorised Brighton over the summer of 1871 by poisoning confectionery and dispersing it around the town....