Author Spotlight

Alice McVeigh

My body of work has been marked by three separate periods. While deeply bored in the back desk of the Royal Philharmonic cello section, I wrote a couple of novels based on London's orchestral world which got me, first, into a great deal of trouble and second, a top London literary agent, who had sold my first novel, with an option of two more, to Orion within a couple of months. I lost that agent three years later, upon entirely failing to deliver the third, due to IVF-induced depression. Meanwhile I managed to conceive our only daughter! I stayed at home with her when she was young, working as a ghostwriter.

In my latest work, I imagine a world in which various characters—whom I understand from knowing all of Austen's books by heart—collide. Here, I imagined the impulsive, emotional Marianne, matured by a very early widowhood, returning to London. She's still young and still beautiful but—now rich—she's also a magnet for young men both trustworthy and untrustworthy. Add to that her younger sister Margaret, and Margaret's own youthful propensity to get into trouble.

Latetly, I'm working on something Persuasion-related, but, as usual, I mix in characters from Austen's other novels, and create characters, myself.

My books have been, almost embarrassingly, often said to resemble Austen's. (Kirkus: "McVeigh has a remarkable sense of the literary world Austen established, and is able to recreate it with masterly skill." Publishers Weekly: "McVeigh's prose and plotting are pitch-perfect.") However, Marianne is far more romantic and dramatic than my previous in this series, and I sometimes worry that the drama involved is more than Austen would have permitted herself. It's the novel I'd recommend if you haven't tried my previous four award-winning standalones. Or if you, like me, simply love an Austenesque turn of phrase!

The US Review of Books has a gravitas and dignity which I appreciate. All of my reviews there have been not only fair, but also very useful.

About the Author: Alice McVeigh was born in Seoul, and spent her childhood in Bangkok, Singapore, and Myanmar and her teenage years in McLean, VA. She has a B.Mus degree (in cello performance, with distinction) from Jacobs School of Music. As a young London cellist in the 1990s, performing with the Royal Philharmonic, she was published by Orion/Hachette in contemporary fiction. Her recent Austenesque novels have, since 2021, been honoured in the UK Selfies finals (2024, 2025), as finalists for Foreword Indies' Book of the Year (2022, 2024), and as BookLife quarterfinalists, amongst 55 other awards. A long-term Londoner, Alice is married to Emeritus Professor Simon McVeigh, with whom she shares a daughter finishing a PhD at Harvard, an unrequited passion for tennis, and a second home by the sea in Crete.