Anna Dean (1) (1956–)
Author of Bellfield Hall: Or, The Observations of Miss Dido Kent
For other authors named Anna Dean, see the disambiguation page.
Series
Works by Anna Dean
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Legal name
- Veevers, Marian
- Other names
- Pen name: Anna Dean
- Birthdate
- 1956
- Gender
- female
- Occupations
- Creative writing tutor
tour guide, Wordsworth House and Garden (Dove Cottage) - Organizations
- The National Trust
- Short biography
- Anna Dean set about crafting stories at the age of five under the impression that everyone was taught to write in order to pen books. By the time she discovered her mistake, the habit was too deeply ingrained to give up. She resides in the Lake District of England with a husband and a cat. She sometimes works as a Creative Writing tutor and as a guide showing visitors around William Wordsworth's home, Dove Cottage. Her interests include walking, old houses, Jane Austen, cream teas, Star Trek and canoeing on very flat water. [from Bellfield Hall, (originally A Moment of Silence) (2008)]
- Nationality
- UK
- Birthplace
- Cumberland, England, UK
- Places of residence
- Lake District, England, UK
- Associated Place (for map)
- England, UK
Members
Reviews
My dear Eliza,
Your sister, Dido Kent, while estimable in most matters, has perpetrated a great injury; for, in producing a novel of her time at Charcombe Manor during April 1807 — a novel so infused with curiosity & suspense — she has inconsiderately ignored her duty to her gentle readers. Surely, a young woman of six & thirty years has developed sufficient sense and knowledge of the world that she must know that such a fascinating tale must lead to her readers staying up all night to show more finish a tale to rival the Gothic romances of the infamous Mrs. Radcliffe?
Pray make no excuses for that selfish girl who — notably ignoring her sense of duty, nay, her sense of family obligation — commits a similar sin against the reading publick. Does Miss Kent’s lack of propriety know no bounds? Her Aunt Manners would certainly confirm such a grievance.
There! I’ve gotten my Regency sensibilities out of the way!
Dido Kent — plain, impoverished and considered a hopeless spinster at 36 — is sent to serve as companion to her imperious hypochondriac aunt, Selina Manners. The pair arrive at Charcombe Manor a day after a pretty young heiress named Letitia Verney vanished. As always, inquisitive, clever Miss Kent cannot resist a mystery.
Told alternately in first-person narration and in letters to her beloved sister Eliza, Dido recounts her adventures in investigating Miss Verney’s disappearance and an ensuing murder of a mystery man named Mr. Brodie, newly arrived from the West Indies. Are the two occurrences connected? Miss Kent certainly thinks so. Miss Kent redoubles her efforts when handsome, fortune-hunting rake Tom Lomax, the son of Miss Kent’s secret love, the noble William Lomax, gets the blame for both tragedies.
Anna Dean’s fourth novel featuring the plucky Dido Kent truly did keep me reading into the wee hours. Dido skillfully puzzles out the many secrets hidden by the various denizens and victors to Charcombe Manor. Unlike with other period novels, Miss Kent never seems anachronistically modern, and, while comparisons to Jane Austen —whether from life or from Stephanie Barron’s excellent mystery series — are inevitable, Dido Kent remains very much an original and very likable character. The Dido Kent mystery series is the Regency mystery series for people who hate Regency mystery series: no anachronistically modern feminist ideas but a good appreciation of the arguments of Mary Wollstonecraft; no deus ex machina resolutions; no cheap romantic encounters completely counter to what would have been possible in leisured families of the early 19th century. What the reader will find is a plucky heroine who refuses to simper or fawn, who insists on using the brains God gave her, who won’t allow delicacy to trump good sense, and who is intent — like Jane Austen and her sister Cassandra — to marry for love and not convenience. In other words, Dido Kent is a pure joy!
Although readers new to the series will be able to read A Place of Confinement without difficulty, the mystery series will prove more satisfying if read in order.
The final pages will gladden the hearts of longtime readers as William Lomax and Dido make their engagement official. Like Dido, suffering from the small torments administered by her haughty Aunt Manners, we readers, too, must suffer as we await the requisite year before the next eagerly awaited novel in the series. show less
Your sister, Dido Kent, while estimable in most matters, has perpetrated a great injury; for, in producing a novel of her time at Charcombe Manor during April 1807 — a novel so infused with curiosity & suspense — she has inconsiderately ignored her duty to her gentle readers. Surely, a young woman of six & thirty years has developed sufficient sense and knowledge of the world that she must know that such a fascinating tale must lead to her readers staying up all night to show more finish a tale to rival the Gothic romances of the infamous Mrs. Radcliffe?
Pray make no excuses for that selfish girl who — notably ignoring her sense of duty, nay, her sense of family obligation — commits a similar sin against the reading publick. Does Miss Kent’s lack of propriety know no bounds? Her Aunt Manners would certainly confirm such a grievance.
There! I’ve gotten my Regency sensibilities out of the way!
Dido Kent — plain, impoverished and considered a hopeless spinster at 36 — is sent to serve as companion to her imperious hypochondriac aunt, Selina Manners. The pair arrive at Charcombe Manor a day after a pretty young heiress named Letitia Verney vanished. As always, inquisitive, clever Miss Kent cannot resist a mystery.
Told alternately in first-person narration and in letters to her beloved sister Eliza, Dido recounts her adventures in investigating Miss Verney’s disappearance and an ensuing murder of a mystery man named Mr. Brodie, newly arrived from the West Indies. Are the two occurrences connected? Miss Kent certainly thinks so. Miss Kent redoubles her efforts when handsome, fortune-hunting rake Tom Lomax, the son of Miss Kent’s secret love, the noble William Lomax, gets the blame for both tragedies.
Anna Dean’s fourth novel featuring the plucky Dido Kent truly did keep me reading into the wee hours. Dido skillfully puzzles out the many secrets hidden by the various denizens and victors to Charcombe Manor. Unlike with other period novels, Miss Kent never seems anachronistically modern, and, while comparisons to Jane Austen —whether from life or from Stephanie Barron’s excellent mystery series — are inevitable, Dido Kent remains very much an original and very likable character. The Dido Kent mystery series is the Regency mystery series for people who hate Regency mystery series: no anachronistically modern feminist ideas but a good appreciation of the arguments of Mary Wollstonecraft; no deus ex machina resolutions; no cheap romantic encounters completely counter to what would have been possible in leisured families of the early 19th century. What the reader will find is a plucky heroine who refuses to simper or fawn, who insists on using the brains God gave her, who won’t allow delicacy to trump good sense, and who is intent — like Jane Austen and her sister Cassandra — to marry for love and not convenience. In other words, Dido Kent is a pure joy!
Although readers new to the series will be able to read A Place of Confinement without difficulty, the mystery series will prove more satisfying if read in order.
This was on my paperbackswap wishlist (I don't remember why); it became available, and I pounced. While still in a sort of "I don't care, there's too much crap going on for me to worry about reading anything besides what I want to read" mood I firmly ignored all the Netgalley books clamoring on the sidelines, picked this off the upper slopes of Mount TBR, and settled in.
I loved it from the start. I was a little afraid at first – the Regency period spinster aunt swooping in to Detect felt show more like a mish-mash of various storylines that Have Been Done. Happily, this was, like Miss Dido Kent, highly individual – and delightful. You know how there are certain words that just aren't fashionable anymore, aren't used much anymore, just don't often apply to much anymore? "Delightful" is one of those. I do enjoy a book I can apply it to. In some ways it's not the most original premise in the universe – it feels like it borrows from everything from Austen to Miss Marple – but I don't say that to run it down. I say that to grin about how a really fine writer can merrily mix together familiar ingredients and produce something unique and lovely.
Bellfield Hall is a bit of a classic English Country House Mystery (™), in that there is a group of people gathered together in a home not their own, and Miss Kent (coming in after the fact) must work with a topography and schedule and staff new to her to discover whether it is her niece's fiancé who has committed a dreadful murder – which is certainly what he has made it seem like, since he up and disappeared, breaking the engagement by letter with no real explanation before making his exit. Dido alone supports her niece in the belief that he had some other reasons, reasons of honor, to vanish, and Dido alone begins to dig.
In the process of the investigation she comes to know the other temporary denizens of the house, most of whom must be considered suspects. There are the two sisters being shopped around by their father for husbands, who don't seem to be what they seem to be; there is the reckless young man who has gambled and drunk away a small fortune he never had in the fine Edwardian style of young dandies, and his honorable father who is going distracted trying to find a way to extricate his son, and himself, from the mess. The latter happens to be an intriguing gentleman, and handsome, and very attentive to Miss Kent …
Dido makes for an interesting, engaging sleuth. She doesn't stray so very far from what is probable and acceptable in a woman of her period; she adheres to the mores of the time, for the most part, and manufactures plausible excuses for the departures she must make in order to find the truth. There's no pretense that she's Sherlock Holmes in skirts – she utilizes her particular skills (observation, good relations with the servants, and a knack for knowing what questions to ask combined with a disregard for unspoken rules that would prevent some of said questions), and gets herself into jams, and doggedly unravels the mystery.
I enjoyed the format, partially epistolary as Dido writes to her sister with news and asking for counsel; the book is entirely from her point of view, and these segments of her first-person voice deepen the picture.
I think the only problem I really have with the story is the love that begins to bloom for Dido. Besides the simple fact that it's kind of nice to have a mostly-un-angst-ridden spinster as the main character (doesn't everyone like to read characters they can easily identify with now and then?), the object of her affection, Mr. Lomax, is … inappropriate. His station is acceptable, I believe – but the problem I see with him is one that would be valid today: his son goes through money like water, and he takes very seriously the duty of repaying the son's debts. It's another indication of his honor – but it's also not really a situation likely to change. As long as Father steps forward to take care of his debts, how likely is the son to stop racking them up? However "on the shelf" Dido may feel (and in fact, in her society, be), however much she might like Mr. Lomax, the cold-blooded and practical must be considered: will her life be more or less precarious if she eventually marries this man? Yet at no point does the consideration really seem to trouble Dido. For someone as eminently sensible as she seems, this felt like a wrong step.
Overall, I liked it very much, and I'm looking forward to the series. The mystery was not beyond the capabilities of someone like Dido; her motivations for involving herself didn't tax my willing suspension of disbelief; I'll have to deal with the keeps-tripping-over-murder-victims aspect of the cozy series further down the road. I liked Dido and the to-the-point letters from her sister, and the language in general. It's a keeper. show less
I loved it from the start. I was a little afraid at first – the Regency period spinster aunt swooping in to Detect felt show more like a mish-mash of various storylines that Have Been Done. Happily, this was, like Miss Dido Kent, highly individual – and delightful. You know how there are certain words that just aren't fashionable anymore, aren't used much anymore, just don't often apply to much anymore? "Delightful" is one of those. I do enjoy a book I can apply it to. In some ways it's not the most original premise in the universe – it feels like it borrows from everything from Austen to Miss Marple – but I don't say that to run it down. I say that to grin about how a really fine writer can merrily mix together familiar ingredients and produce something unique and lovely.
Bellfield Hall is a bit of a classic English Country House Mystery (™), in that there is a group of people gathered together in a home not their own, and Miss Kent (coming in after the fact) must work with a topography and schedule and staff new to her to discover whether it is her niece's fiancé who has committed a dreadful murder – which is certainly what he has made it seem like, since he up and disappeared, breaking the engagement by letter with no real explanation before making his exit. Dido alone supports her niece in the belief that he had some other reasons, reasons of honor, to vanish, and Dido alone begins to dig.
In the process of the investigation she comes to know the other temporary denizens of the house, most of whom must be considered suspects. There are the two sisters being shopped around by their father for husbands, who don't seem to be what they seem to be; there is the reckless young man who has gambled and drunk away a small fortune he never had in the fine Edwardian style of young dandies, and his honorable father who is going distracted trying to find a way to extricate his son, and himself, from the mess. The latter happens to be an intriguing gentleman, and handsome, and very attentive to Miss Kent …
Dido makes for an interesting, engaging sleuth. She doesn't stray so very far from what is probable and acceptable in a woman of her period; she adheres to the mores of the time, for the most part, and manufactures plausible excuses for the departures she must make in order to find the truth. There's no pretense that she's Sherlock Holmes in skirts – she utilizes her particular skills (observation, good relations with the servants, and a knack for knowing what questions to ask combined with a disregard for unspoken rules that would prevent some of said questions), and gets herself into jams, and doggedly unravels the mystery.
I enjoyed the format, partially epistolary as Dido writes to her sister with news and asking for counsel; the book is entirely from her point of view, and these segments of her first-person voice deepen the picture.
I think the only problem I really have with the story is the love that begins to bloom for Dido. Besides the simple fact that it's kind of nice to have a mostly-un-angst-ridden spinster as the main character (doesn't everyone like to read characters they can easily identify with now and then?), the object of her affection, Mr. Lomax, is … inappropriate. His station is acceptable, I believe – but the problem I see with him is one that would be valid today: his son goes through money like water, and he takes very seriously the duty of repaying the son's debts. It's another indication of his honor – but it's also not really a situation likely to change. As long as Father steps forward to take care of his debts, how likely is the son to stop racking them up? However "on the shelf" Dido may feel (and in fact, in her society, be), however much she might like Mr. Lomax, the cold-blooded and practical must be considered: will her life be more or less precarious if she eventually marries this man? Yet at no point does the consideration really seem to trouble Dido. For someone as eminently sensible as she seems, this felt like a wrong step.
Overall, I liked it very much, and I'm looking forward to the series. The mystery was not beyond the capabilities of someone like Dido; her motivations for involving herself didn't tax my willing suspension of disbelief; I'll have to deal with the keeps-tripping-over-murder-victims aspect of the cozy series further down the road. I liked Dido and the to-the-point letters from her sister, and the language in general. It's a keeper. show less
This is subtitled "The Observations of Miss Dido Kent", who, to paraphrase Library Thing author Rosie Claverton, is sort of what might result if Jane Austen had created Miss Marple. It's been likened to Regency mysteries, although the first page sets us clearly down in the autumn of 1805, so not quite of the actual period. Miss Kent is a maiden aunt, called into service when her niece Catherine's engagement to the heir to Belsfield Hall is suddenly cut off by the young man himself. Aunt Dido show more simply must find out why he would have done it, and then disappeared from the estate, when Catherine knows he still loves her. Before she can get very far with her discreet inquiries, however, a body turns up in the shrubbery. Dido has unpleasant suspicions...a good many of them, as the days pass...but she can't substantiate much until she gains the loyalty of a young footman, and the friendship of Sir Edgar's "man of business". Pleasantly cosy, not quite predictable, but eminently plausible and satisfactorily concluded.
Reviewed in 2023 show less
Reviewed in 2023 show less
A splendid climax to the four books, each self-contained but with the same acid-tongued heroine. I normally can read a book at a page a minute but these books require a slower read to avoid missing the clues and the sly comments.
A marvelous melange of Jane Austen type barbs and good complex mystery. Rather like Jane Austen the really sharp observations were in her letters to her sister. A book to be savoured and treaured.
A marvelous melange of Jane Austen type barbs and good complex mystery. Rather like Jane Austen the really sharp observations were in her letters to her sister. A book to be savoured and treaured.
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