Twelve men and a muse
The Emily Chesley Reading Circle
It's easy to see twelve men getting together each month
in a London pub, having a few beers and chewing the fat. What's harder
to picture is what comes next.
For the reason one group of twelve meet is to bring to
life a character they've single-handedly created — Emily Chutney
Chesley — a Victorian writer of speculative
fiction, satirist, feminist, adventurer, taboo-breaker. and one of the
lustiest women ever to grace the pages of book or computer screen.
The group, called the Emily Chesley Reading Circle, began
in 1998 when founders
Mark Rayner. John Sloan, David Lurie, and Malcolm Ruddock wanted to write
creatively and started by fabricating Emily's life story.
Their inspiration was The Flashman Papers by George MacDonald
Fraser. who wove the adventures of a fictional character. Harry Flashman.
into historical events. Like Flashman, Emily's sardonic observations and
exotic escapades are told against a backdrop of actual locations recorded
incidents.
"Any satire is rooted in reality, but this is rooted
so deeply that sometimes you'd go is this real?'" says Rayner, "We
get a lot of fun out of that!"
Writing Emily's history has been a shared activity. with
members writing segments according 10 their interest. It took three years
to shape the broad arc of Emily's life and they're now adding details.
In contrast. Rayner authored Emily's short stories alone, while Sloan
and Lurie penned her poems-In the late-1990s, the Circle went public when
Rayner created an irreverent website, www.emilychesley.com. which features
Emily's biography. writings, and her eccentric uncle's inventions. It
also hosts stones by winners of The Tundra Prize.
The Dr. Maximillian Tundra Memorial Poetry and Short Speculative
Fiction Contest is an annual juried competition the Circle in initiated
three years ago. It aims to foster interest in speculative fiction —
science fiction, fantasy, highly imaginative writing — and to encourage
humorous. satirical, over-the-top short stories and poetry.
A promise to publish the Tundra Prize-winning stories led
the Circle into book publishing. In 2(K)3. it released The Meanderings
of the Emily Chesley Reading Circle, which includes parts of Emily's bio,
her writings, and the Tundra Prize winners. Members are now planning a
second book and dreaming beyond that.
"We're hoping that someday a publisher's going to
want to do a longer biography of Emily," Rayner says-It isn't an
unrealistic aspiration, for already Emily has inspired others. Suitcase
In Point, a theatrical group in St. Catherines, created a one-act play
based on Emily's adventures that appeared in St. Catherines and Toronto
last summer.
"|The play] was a neat experience because it was a
different group. They're all younger than us and the prime movers are
women." savs Ravner. "I'd always been secretly afraid women
didn't get the joke. But I don't think that's the case. They got the joke."
So what's next for the Emily Chesley Reading Circle?
Have its members exhausted Emily or will she continue as muse as long
as twelve men want to meet over beers and write?
"John [Sloan] and I discussed whether we were
done with Emily." says Rayner- "Apparently not — there's
always more to write about. That's the thing about a mythic figure like
Emily. She's bigger than anyone, bigger than life almost."
— Susan Scott
— Scene Magazine, Feb. 5, 2004
scan of the
original story
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