likely Archives - Eloisa James | New York Times Best Selling Author

Everybody wants to know how Julia and Connie and I came up with this idea…honestly, I can’t remember exactly. At some point Julia and I realized that it would be great fun to go away together and write a book. We needed to add another writer whose work we not only admired, but whose voice would mesh with ours. We asked Connie, and it was all set!
The Lady Most Likely was deeply influenced by Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In fact, a good part of the epilogue is filched from his depiction of jaundiced aristocrats watching the performance of a truly terrible Pyramus and Thisby. The three of us had a wonderful time writing this section, as we each voiced the sarcastic comments of our own (now paired up) characters.
Along with A Midsummer Night’s Dream, my particular novella borrows from a creative retelling of Shakespeare’s Hamlet: Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. My Mr. Lear is the ancestor of Stoppard’s morose and very grand Player. (If you haven’t seen the film version of this play, I highly recommend it.)
It was important to me that an intrinsic part of my heroine’s personality mesh with the hero’s. In short, I didn’t want to simply bring together two beautiful people and have them dance into the sunset. Georgina’s doll-making is, in its own way, as quirky as Hugh’s horse-training. As a couple, they will love, sustain, and understand each other’s interests.

Bookcode: likely