Did you always plan to write a novel?
When I was a child, I wanted to be an actor, but I realised quickly enough that I didn’t have the talent to do that. I decided I wanted to perform behind the scenes, without being present – through writing. I started quite late, just scribbling on my own and I did that for a couple of years, then I thought “am I going to do anything about this or not?” and I applied for an MA in the University of East Anglia. I knew I wanted to write a book, but I had no idea that I wanted to write this particular book.
When you say you started quite late, how old do you mean? (McCrea is now 38.)
I was in my late 20s, which felt late for me, perhaps because actors start young. And I knew a lot of people in college when I was younger who were sending away to magazines. I never did anything like that.
How did you discover the existence of Lizzie and Mary Burns?
I came across the sisters Lizzie and Mary in a biography of Friedrich Engels. I encountered Mary initially and I thought it was very interesting that Engels had a relationship with this Irishwoman. Then I realised that Mary’s sister Lizzie had a later relationship with him, and it gives her this unique perspective on events. I decided that the book would be about the second sister, and that it would be written in the first person.
Friedrich came to Manchester in 1842 and in my novel he meets Lizzie in the mill, though it is not actually known how they met – Mary was his guide around the city. He wrote his book, Conditions of the Working Class in England, in which he uses this refrain “Let us hear” to introduce the voices of all these middle-class observers – very rarely, in 200 pages, does he let us hear the voices of the working class. I felt very, very strongly about this and thought it would be interesting to try to write a story from the perspective of a working-class woman – and from the perspective of Lizzie.
Mary died before Engels moved to London to be close to Marx and she died before Engels had the courage to live with her openly. He kept Mary in a semi-clandestine state in order to protect his business interests. I thought it would be interesting to look at how Lizzie rises in the way that Mary didn’t.
Mrs Engels is set in the 1870s. How did you approach writing the dialogue in the book?
Most of the work I did in the novel was to sustain Lizzie’s voice, and she has two different voices in the book: there are her thoughts and there is her dialogue. I mean that very concretely, as I had two documents containing the words I would use in each, drawn from 19th-century literature and biographical research, and I tried to stick to it. It’s quite an exciting thing to do. The danger is it becomes kitsch or too much like Victoriana. It was actually much richer in the first draft – her idiom was denser – but I combed through it and took a lot out, so it wouldn’t come across too flowery.
We learn about Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx through the novel. How much of their story did you want to tell and how much did you want to keep the balance with Lizzie?
Because Lizzie was illiterate, the only way to learn about her is through the letters of Marx and Engels and the biographies of Marx and Engels. There’s a shining light and then a dark centre. But I didn’t want these historical figures taking over the show and that meant taking out whole scenes I had written. When you have done a lot of research, it is tempting to enact that research, and then you realise it is taking you away from the story. Some ambiguities have to remain, because otherwise you are losing Lizzie. You are walking a tightrope between maintaining historical interest and keeping the novel Lizzie’s.
How would you describe your writing routine? Is it 9 to 5?
I’m not a 9 to 5 person. I write every day, but not 9 to 5. I was lucky in that when I was coming out of the MA I won a scholarship, so I had a bit of money and could spend most of my time on the novel. I know some people get up early, but I didn’t – it was actually counter-productive for me. In the morning, I would take some exercise, and start at maybe 10 or 11 o’clock and work until I am ready to stop, which is usually before 10 o’clock – not that I worked 12 hours a day. It didn’t always work for me to take a weekend off. I will keep going until I reach the end of a chapter. If I’m halfway through something, I usually find it very hard to leave it unfinished.
Are you working on another project now?
It was a two-book deal from Scribe, so I have a deadline for the next novel. It’s a very flexible deadline [December 31st], but it would be nice to keep it.
Can you tell us anything about it?
There is a danger of talking about something that is not written yet, but I may as well. The next novel is about a theatre family in London in the 1950s whose fate becomes intertwined with the wife of [former Chinese Communist leader] Mao Tse-tung. She was an actress, I should say. It has the working title of The Sisters Mao.
It is interesting that you say you thought about becoming an actor, as the character of Lizzie is such a strong creation.
There was a performative element to writing as Lizzie Burns that I really enjoyed – it was always me, ultimately, but while I was performing her, I was really enjoying it.
