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Penny and Christina use digitized newspapers to research their guest's family or personal history. The newspapers are hosted in Trove, the National Library of Australia's online research portal.
(piano music)
00:10 This podcast was recorded at State Library Victoria on Aboriginal land, the unceded, stolen land of the Wurunjeri people of the Kulin Nations. We pay our respects to their elders past and present.
00:21 (piano music)
00:31 Hello, Penny here. I'm just by myself doing Trove chat today. And that's easy for me cos I can talk to myself about Trove for hours. So I won't do that though, just a couple of minutes. One thing I've been thinking about is what to call myself as a Trove lover. So I'm wondering if there is, or should there be a word for those of us who are a bit obsessed by Trove. Trove-heads, or Trove-o-philes. But if anyone has any ideas, please let me know because I would love to have a label for this big part of my identity.
01:12 (piano music)
01:21 PENNY: Today we are talking to Emily Gale who is, what I would describe as a children's book all-rounder so she's an author, but she's also worked in publishing. She's an editor, she has a very good newsletter about children's literature. It's a Substack called 'Voracious', which I subscribe to. So welcome Emily to In Those Days.
EMILY: Thank you so much, delighted to be here with the two of you.
CHRISTINA: Yay.
EMILY: Long time listener, first time caller.
PENNY: Oh that's nice. Oh and I forgot to say, Emily recently, for her book, 'The Goodbye Year', she won the New South Wales Premier's young people's history prize.
EMILY: I did, and it was my first prize so I'm very, very proud.
CHRISTINA: That's very exciting. Did you get a sash, or what did you get?
PENNY: A crown!
EMILY: Yes, I did get a crown.
CHRISTINA: A small parade.
PENNY: Is that what you're wearing now?
EMILY: A giant cheque.
CHRISTINA: Everyone loves a novelty cheque.
EMILY: Actually my partner kept saying, he came to the award ceremony with me, which was at the State Library in Sydney. He's in IT, he doesn't know anything about books.
CHRISTINA: Just giving it a go.
EMILY: Kept saying, 'Is there gonna be a giant cheque?'
PENNY: So basically Emily Gale, I would say that anything that you can do to a kid's book, she's done it.
CHRISTINA: That's not concerning at all.
EMILY: Mainly pile them up and wait for the days to come when I can just read them all. That's what I really want to do.
PENNY: You see, you're good, you read. You're excellent.
CHRISTINA: Don't you read Penny?
PENNY: I do, I read a little bit but I feel guilty about how much I haven't read. Cos I'm always on Trove, wasting time.
EMILY: But it's never a waste of time to be on Trove.
PENNY: So, the topic that we're going to be talking about today is something that I read about in Emily's newsletter. It was about the Greenaway Medal, which has been renamed and Emily was talking about that, which we'll talk about that later as well. But she was talking about the illustrator who the medal is named after Kate Greenaway. I looked up Kate Greenaway in Trove and saw there's a few articles about her and I looked at her illustrations and I kind of remembered it a little bit from childhood. It all looked a bit familiar. So Christina, did you read Kate Greenaway growing up?
CHRISTINA: Well I didn't know that I read it but I did have a little bit of a search before coming in today and certainly the images were very familiar to me. I don't remember much of the actual stories but definitely the pictures.
PENNY: Yeah, I think maybe the stories are not the
CHRISTINA: They're not the point, are they?
EMILY: There's little poems and little ditties and things. But really it's the illustrations that she is most well-known for.
PENNY: And so did you read her books, or look at her books growing up?
EMILY: Yeah, I think looking at Kate Greenaway's illustrations would be my first memory of children's picture books. I used to stay a lot with my grandparents on my mum's side and they lived in Hampstead in London, which is where Kate Greenaway lived the latter part of her life. And they had a fantastic collection of books, which were very sort of old and beautifully bound and had tissue paper in them. It was very fancy. They weren't at all precious about their things. So I remember them saying to me, 'You can take that big book off the shelf and you can look at it and be very careful.' And I remember feeling very proud that I was being trusted to look at these very gorgeous books and that would have been a Kate Greenaway book.
PENNY: Oh, that's lovely. There was a family connection to Kate Greenaway wasn't there?
EMILY: Yeah. I'll go right, right back as we love to talk about history in this podcast. So I think my great great great grandmother was a landscape artist and she supported her family with her art because her husband was very ill. Her son became an art dealer and he had a gallery in Leicester Square and that sort of became the family thing, art dealing and having exhibitions and so on. And his name was Ernest Brown and he counted Kate Greenaway as a friend.
PENNY: And that was not through the gallery though, was it?
EMILY: They didn't exhibit her work, I don't think. Although they did have about 25 exhibitions a year, that was, they ran their art gallery very, very differently to most. They were really a kind of art gallery for the people. So they weren't sort of exclusive. There was a turnstile at the door and you paid a little, a small amount to go in and so anybody could come in for a small amount of money and have a look at the exhibitions. You didn't have to buy anything there was none of that stuffiness about it. Yeah, so I'm not sure if they did exhibit her work but this great great grandfather was very interested in illustrators and so he had a friendship with her and Sir John Tenniel who did they Alice in Wonderland illustrations and various other illustrators he loved.
PENNY: That's amazing heritage for you as someone who now works in children's books.
EMILY: Well I didn't know about it. I actually didn't know about it at the time. I didn't know that his mother had published a children's book.
PENNY: Really?
EMILY: Called ‘Muriel's Dreamland’. I had absolutely no idea about it. I just found that out by myself and then phoned my mum and said, 'Did you know that there was this children's book?'
PENNY: 'Did you think I might'
EMILY: No, never heard of it.
PENNY: She didn't know?
EMILY: No, never heard of it. So I had to go on Ebay and sort of buy copies for all the family and go, 'Here we go. The first children's book in our family was not by me it was actually by Elanor Brown.'
PENNY: Was it any good?
EMILY: Yeah, it's called 'Muriel's Dreamland' and it is very sort of faeries and dreams and that sort of thing. So if that's your sort of thing, yeah. It was actually a vehicle for her daughter, who was also an artist. She was trying to give her daughter a leg-up into the world of illustration and she also became and artist as well.
PENNY: So you do have big pedigree there. Even if you didn't know about it. I would not call you a nepo kid's book person.
EMILY: Thanks. I'm not.
PENNY: Because you didn't even know and they didn't help you.
CHRISTINA: No.
EMILY: They didn't. They were so dead by then that they couldn't.
PENNY: That's lovely. But illustration, have you ever done illustration? Cos I only know you as a writer.
EMILY: Not in any way.
PENNY: Okay.
EMILY: Really not and I was very jealous of my brother growing up because he was very good at art and I was not. I was sort of all right at copying at a push but could not draw from my imagination whatsoever and I found that very frustrating.
PENNY: What about your kids? Has it skipped a generation.
EMILY: Both very good at art. Both of them.
PENNY: It's coming back.
EMILY: My daughter's just done art VCE. She's very good. But doesn't want to pursue it cos she doesn't want to live the life of an artist, which is fair enough. She wants to be able to earn a living.
PENNY: Christina, I don't even know, how's your drawing.
CHRISTINA: Well, fun fact. When I was at uni and I doing zoology I discovered I'm really good at drawing bones. To the point that I ended up getting paid to draw bones for a couple of university handbooks.
PENNY: I had no idea.
CHRISTINA: It's a really niche market.
EMILY: I would have that in my bio. Paid to draw bones.
CHRISTINA: If anyone needs bones drawn, particularly skulls. I'm really good.
EMILY: I love that.
PENNY: Have you tried to draw anything else?
CHRISTINA: Look, I used to really really enjoy drawing very detailed sort of specimen drawings. So I really enjoyed that. I loved art at school. But I seemed to be much better at doing very detailed, very accurate things, which is quite strange cos I'm not very detailed and accurate in any other part of my life.
PENNY: That's very interesting.
EMILY: Well that sounds very like Beatrix Potter cos she grew up in her bedroom surrounded by specimens and that's how she taught herself to draw because she didn't go to school, her brother went to school and she stayed at home and did her own thing. But yeah, she would draw dead things and really studied anatomy and that's why she was so good at drawing animals.
CHRISTINA: That's interesting. I've missed out on Jemima Puddle duck.
EMILY: There's still time.
PENNY: I don't think you've missed out.
CHRISTINA: Nah, I'll just draw some really creepy kids' book with bones.
PENNY: Well I think there's a market for that.
EMILY: There's a John Klassen picture book that just came out called 'The Skull' and it's about a little girl who finds a skull and they have a friendship. You could do a follow-up.
PENNY: 'Find a Femur' or something.
CHRISTINA: 'Hunt down a Humorous'.
EMILY: This is a series we're creating on the spot.
PENNY: Absolutely. This is why we get Emily here.
CHRISTINA: Get the ideas pumping. It has been a very long time since I've drawn a bone though.
PENNY: I don't think it would have left you.
CHRISTINA: No.
PENNY: So, because Kate Greenaway was so famous, even though she lived in England there's plenty of things published in Australian papers about her and sometimes also because they republished articles from overseas. So I've got one that was actually published in the Toronto Globe. But it was republished in the Launceston Examiner from Monday the 5th of June 1893. It says:
"A CHARMINGC ARTIST. Miss Kate Greenaway has inherited her remarkable powers from her father, who was a wood engraver of no mean merit, and who took a great and constant interest in the art proclivities of his daughter, daily instructing her when she was quite a little girl how to observe and what to observe, and in fact "coaching" her in the first elements of art. Although a circumstance now well nigh forgotten, there is little doubt that Miss Greenaway's first great hit was due to what may be called the card fever. It was not till some twenty years ago that people first began to think of sending each other those little tokens at various festive seasons of the year."
Which is quite interesting.
EMILY: And they were very elaborate. They had lovely things on them. They weren't just a sort of flat card.
PENNY: "One of the pioneers in such matters, Marcus Ward, the great art publisher, saw some of Miss Greenaway's drawings, and at once commissioned her to design a set of cards for him. During the first year that she worked for him she did some 70 exquisite pictures, and her name became widely known."
So she's like famous for doing Christmas cards.
EMILY: Yeah, that's how she started out and then into books.
PENNY: "In 1879 Messrs Caesell and Co. issued her "Little Folks' Painting Book," which was sold by the hundred thousand."
Hundreds of thousands!
EMILY: The numbers were big. Can you imagine now? If your publisher said, 'By the way here's your royalty statement. 150,000 copies.'
PENNY: I mean, you.
EMILY: That is your royalty statement, isn't it Penny.
PENNY: Yeah, that's right.
CHRISTINA: She was trying to downplay it.
PENNY: I mean I know it's probably different. I mean Australia's much smaller than the UK and America, but even there, surely. Is that a lot?
EMILY: Oh, it's still a lot.
PENNY: It's a lot.
"When "Under the Window" appeared in November of the same year it made Kate Greenaway famous."
It was her break-out work. So, I haven't read it. What's 'Under the Window' like?
EMILY: Well it's sort of a lot of what you associate with Kate Greenaway in terms of the loveliness and the long dresses and the countryside ideal life, which is really what she was always trying to present as a contrast to the deprivations of the industrial revolution and how that had changed children's lives for the very much worse. She was always trying to give children this escape from the life that they might have been living, especially in London, which even though she always lived in London she was not really a huge fan of I think. Yeah, but 'Under the Window' does contain a little bit of the dark side of Kate Greenaway's imagination as well. But then that was sort of shaken out of her by John Ruskin, who she became very good friends with.
PENNY: Oh, we're gonna get to John Ruskin. He's a, yeah, we'll get him.
EMILY: That's a promise.
PENNY: Yeah, I do feel like the title 'Under the Window' it does sound like a little bit like there's a peeping Tom but
CHRISTINA: Yeah, it's a little bit creepy.
PENNY: Just lurking.
EMILY: Well, just looking at the Kate Greenaway book that I've kept from birth actually this would have been given to me in 1975, which is selection from 'Marigold’s Garden' there is not a single man in this book. Not one. There are little boys and probably the oldest boy in this book looks to be about 7 but apart from that it's all young women, young girls and mums. The whole thing.
PENNY: Cos it's idealistic.
EMILY: Yeah.
CHRISTINA: Men just weigh you down.
EMILY: Just draw them out of your picture books.
CHRISTINA: Just don't acknowledge that they exist.
EMILY: Refuse to draw men.
PENNY: "Now for a word as to the way in which this charming artist makes everyday material do duty to her pencil. Even when she was at school "Kitty," as she was called, began to make studies of all her little friends, noting here or there a quaint bonnet, a long cloak, a short cape, or a boy's smock."
So were you a writer, did you always want to be a writer?
EMILY: Secretly yes, but I did not think it was a realistic thing to do. Not because I was really practical and thinking about money. But because I really thought authors were all dead. I did not really have any concept of authors being alive and just roaming around us.
PENNY: Well all the good ones are. I don't know if you read that article in the Saturday Paper.
EMILY: No, I didn't because I cancelled my subscription to the Saturday Paper for not having any children's book content.
PENNY: Well it's got some now.
CHRISTINA: You took a stand.
EMILY: But I did hear, someone emailed it to me, obviously thinking I would immediately write a rude reply to it. So, what does it say?
PENNY: It says that she doesn't like fart books, but fart books for her are not just books with farts, they're books that are too moralistic or too heavy or whatever. And basically, books in the olden days were heaps better and there's been a war on imagination and kids these days aren't even doing pretend play, because one primary school teacher told her that. So that's definitely true.
EMILY: Wow. New to me.
PENNY: Yeah. My daughter plays cat school at recess but you know, where just one person's the teacher and everyone else are the cats.
CHRISTINA: I mean that makes sense.
PENNY: But kids are not doing imaginative play anymore and it's because the books aren't rich enough.
EMILY: It's because of the books?
PENNY: Yeah.
EMILY: Oh that's a very long bow, isn't it?
PENNY: And then at the end she goes, 'Look, there are some good recent books like'
EMILY: Don't. You're going to hurt me now, aren't you?
PENNY: 'You know that it's hard to believe it was 60 years ago but 'Where the Wild things Are'.
CHRISTINA: Oh no.
PENNY: And she did say Alison Lester, that was the only alive author that she kind of mentioned. 'Hungry Caterpillar'. Also a good book.
EMILY: Brilliant. Cheers for that.
CHRISTINA: They're really recent.
EMILY: Well, she obviously knows the industry inside out and is best qualified to make that point so fantastic, thanks Saturday Paper.
CHRISTINA: That's just bizarre, the no imaginative play. Cos it's all around us, everywhere I look at school.
EMILY: Well you would know.
CHRISTINA: They're all making weird stuff up. Like you know there's a particular flower bush and they've all made up this thing that they get superpowers from flowers. It's a whole situation. We've had to tell them that they're not allowed to eat the flowers.
EMILY: There's nothing wrong with their imaginations.
CHRISTINA: Turn your back and they're eating the flowers again to get their superpowers.
PENNY: So when did you start to think that maybe you could be a writer?
EMILY: I just always did write. You know and wrote some really quite awful poetry all through my teenager years. I never really finished stories. I started a lot of stories or books but I never finished them. But the good thing about poems is you could finish them.
PENNY: Stop at any point.
EMILY: That's done.
CHRISTINA: The weirder the better.
PENNY: Halfway through a sentence. That's art.
EMILY: My first job out of uni was with a children's publisher and I became an editor. But again, of dead authors so. Beatrix Potter being one of the main ones.
PENNY: Are you allowed to edit?
CHRISTINA: Well no, there were very strict rules in those days about what you could do with Beatrix Potter. Like such as you could not flip a picture of Peter Rabbit. It just because you wanted to put it on a calendar. It had to be the way that she had originally drawn it. It's all different. But in my day, very strict rules. But I guess from there and working with children's books I thought, 'I think I really want to be actually writing'.
PENNY: Did you start writing your first book while you were still working in publishing?
EMILY: Yes.
PENNY: I imagine that's quite hard.
EMILY: I started writing an adult novel when I was working in children's publishing. So it felt very separate.
PENNY: Yeah.
EMILY: And I felt like I didn't really know anything about adult publishing. And I didn't. I did very silly things around that. Cos I really only knew about the little children's world.
PENNY: Okay, this article continues:
"These almost daily memoranda were continued later on; rarely a week has elapsed, but she pays a visit to some school-room to seek out new material."
Now you're not allowed to do that anymore. You're not allowed to just rock up at a school. And Christina, you're an assistant principal, this is my understanding.
CHRISTINA: There's a lot of checks that people have to have if they want to pop in. Even qualified allied health people need to be put through the ringer, to check that they're legit.
PENNY: Yeah, you can't be like, 'I'm just wanting to get some inspiration for my next book'.
CHRISTINA: Sense the vibe in the classroom.
PENNY: "Some few years ago she would constantly be met, sketch-book in hand, at most of the great charitable festivals, notably those in which children took part, and it was in St. Paul's Cathedral, crowded on great days with the little folk of both town and country, that many of her happiest thoughts took shape."
Emily, do you get inspiration from going to schools? Cos you go to schools in a legal, formal capacity to do talk.
EMILY: Full check. Do I get inspiration from going into schools?
PENNY: Or spending time around kids. Is that necessary for your work?
EMILY: I've definitely taken inspiration from my own children and from their friends and that sort of thing but not in a creepy, I will steal your lives kind of way.
PENNY: Or, 'That was a good idea'.
EMILY: No, not in that way and my children have never complained that I've stolen their stories or anything like that. But I think just spending time with children and remembering what it's like to be 8, or to be 12. I think that's what that does, spending time with them takes you back to your feeling and that's the most important thing for writing a book from a child's perspective. I think some of your actual memories may not be exactly what happened, I mean memory is a very slippery thing, but it's the feeling of being that age, that's what you're trying to tap into.
PENNY: And the thing that I may use sometimes is just like the details of schools, like how they do things differently now. How they have music instead of bells, stuff like that.
EMILY: That's so important. I mean obviously I grew up in London. Totally different system and at a totally different time so having that connection to Australian schools is very important to me and having Australian editors too who say to me, 'That is a very English thing to say Emily, we're not gonna say that.' Which does happen a little bit but not that much, I've been here for 15 years now.
PENNY: Oh that's great. Okay:
"Miss Greenaway uses almost pure colours when she works. The outline is firmly drawn over with pen or pencil and the shadows are then struck in with grey. She has built for herself a delightful little cottage on Hampstead Hill full of the quaint gables and strange inglenooks that she loves to put into her pictures."
Now can I just say does everyone know what an inglenook is?
EMILY: I feel like I don't.
PENNY: It's like a little bit near a chimney. Like a little nook.
CHRISTINA: Inglenook.
EMILY: Lovely. I'll try to use that in a sentence today.
PENNY: Yes, I do want one now.
CHRISTINA: Yes, I didn't know I did, but I do now.
PENNY: "On the lawn outside is the gnarled apple tree which has lately figured in some of her designs. The studio is innocent of artistic properties, and is essentially a work room."
EMILY: Yes her studio, I've seen a photo of it, it's quite plain.
PENNY: So did you ever walk past her house, see it?
EMILY: Yes, I've definitely seen it from the outside. It's now flats, it's not a whole house anymore. Yeah, they've all be carved up.
PENNY: An inglenook for everyone, I hope.
CHRISTINA: Everyone gets an inglenook.
EMILY: Yeah, but it's in Hamsptead, which I did spend a lot of my childhood in Hampstead.
PENNY: "Miss Greenaway has a morbid horror of being interviewed or written about in any way"
She was fine with podcasts though can I just say.
CHRISTINA: A big fan.
EMILY: She welcomed them.
PENNY: So this is not disrespectful at all.
CHRISTINA: Right up her alley.
PENNY: "and has even been known to refuse to visit her friends for fear a journalist should be about."
EMILY: I love how publicity shy she was.
PENNY: Yeah, so I reckon lots of authors and illustrators are introverts.
EMILY: I think lots are.
PENNY: But is that okay these days? Like if someone sent their book to a publisher, the publisher goes, 'I love it.' Imagine this. 'Love it. Definitely want to publish it. Don't change a word'. And then the author said, 'But I will not talk to journalists. I'm very shy and very private.' Is that okay?
EMILY: Well, it is now because no journalist is interested in talking to a children's book author.
PENNY: It's fine, it's not gonna make any difference.
EMILY: No. Newspapers don't write about children's books. They don't have any review space. They're not interested. So yeah. Fine.
PENNY: Fine. What if you said, 'I don't want to do any social media’?
EMILY: I don't find that publishers are leaning that heavily on authors for it. I mean a lot of authors and illustrators do take it upon themselves to do it because they think it's important.
PENNY: No-one cares.
EMILY: I haven't heard Australian publishers giving the hard-word particularly.
PENNY: No-one's ever wanted me to do anything.
EMILY: More so in America. Like I remember when I was first published in America the publisher said, 'Now I want you to change your Twitter icon to the book cover. That's what we want you to do.' I've never been told to do anything like that by an Australian publisher.
PENNY: And most people really want to go to festivals. But if you said 'I don't want to go to festivals. I don't want to go to schools.' Do you think they'd care?
EMILY: They'd be worried. Because then they're completely relying on the market to carry you. There's no other route. And of course, like visiting schools and doing festivals and so on is a very lucrative route for some authors. Again, it's not for everyone. Not everyone will, I've never been invited to a public festival.
PENNY: Haven't you?
EMILY: No. I've done Somerset once, which is a huge schools festival, which is absolutely amazing, but no I've never been invited to a public one or haven't really done
PENNY: Like the writer's festivals?
EMILY: No, nothing like that.
PENNY: What are they doing?
EMILY: Well, there's a lot of authors.
PENNY: Yeah, but you're not just brining
CHRISTINA: Penny's outraged. She's absolutely outraged.
PENNY: Yes, you're an author but there are a lot of other panels that they could put you on. Like a lot of other things that you could talk about.
EMILY: I don't think this is actually the big reason but I guess I am British, I sound British. That could, I mean Australian publishing has to look after Australian authors. I'm like a ring-in. Only just got here. That kind of thing. I just think there's a lot of interesting people. You can't sort of expect anything. So I think you do have to be prepared to do your own thing.
PENNY: Given that, given that you haven't been invited to do all those thing, because you probably are one of the people that everyone's head of and everyone knows.
EMILY: Not outside of Victoria. I think I've.
PENNY: Oh really?
CHRISTINA: I'm sure they have.
EMILY: Maybe they have, I don't know. But I have worked hard and not just. I think I've worked hard because I love children's books so I talk a lot about other people's books as well.
PENNY: Yeah and I think it's that kind of building up in the community and when there's an issue you are sort of at the forefront of that.
EMILY: I mean I have a lot of opinions Penny.
CHRISTINA: The best people always do.
EMILY: And I am sort of, I suppose I'm a bit gobby, to use a British phrase and so it's pretty easy to call on me if you want to make some trouble.
PENNY: Exciting. So not like Kate Greenaway then, in that sense.
EMILY: No but I do have that side as well and it's always a battle inside. Sometimes I do think, 'Oh Emily, why can't you just shut up?'
PENNY: I wrote a tweet last night and then deleted it. Not that anyone had noticed it, but I was just like, 'Is this what I want to be?'
EMILY: And I press tweet, you see, that's the difference.
PENNY: I tweet it and then I go...
CHRISTINA: You had tweet regret.
EMILY: It's hard. It's very hard to have a kind of public image. Any kind of public image is difficult. It does come with a lot of angst.
PENNY: "Among the most intimate friends are Lord and Lady Tennyson with them she spends many happy days at Haslemere and in the Isle of Wight. She is devoted to children, and they return the compliment, for she is one of the kindest and sweetest tempered of women. It is said that a West End firm once offered her £2000 a year if she would design the clothes of their lilliputian customers, but she refused, prefering to work her own way and at her own time. Next to drawing she is devoted to music, and may sometimes be seen listening intently at one of the Monday pops or simpler ballad concerts. She leads a simple, regular life, seldom if ever goes out in the evening. All her joy is in her work."
EMILY: But I think interesting that she was so known for being popular with children and for genuinely enjoying the company of children, which is not necessarily the case for a lot of beloved children's creators of old.
PENNY: Absolutely. Well even of
CHRISTINA: Of late
EMILY: I think now we're really known for it though. We do go into schools.
PENNY: You're meant to like kids, yeah definitely. I can't think of any kind of curmudgeonly
EMILY: I think there probably are some curmudgeonly
PENNY: Actually, I can think of a curmudgeonly person
EMILY: But that's alright. It's not a prerequisite but
PENNY: I think at least at the start you're meant to be pretty happy, like if you're in your 20s or 30s and you get your first book published, you're meant to be very excited.
EMILY: Yes, definitely. You can get a bit old and grouchy after a couple of decades.
28:58 PENNY: So I found some reviews of her work from the time. So this is from the Australasian from the 27th of October 1883. It's titled:
"MISS KATE GREENAWAY'S LATEST CHILD'S BOOK.
In this charming child's book, which is sent to me by Mr. Mullen, Collins-street, Miss Greenaway has taken a number of poems by Jane and Ann Taylor, and has given to them new interest and fresh significance by a number of drawings by her inimitable pencil. The result of the lady artist illustrating for children the poems of these lady poets,"
CHRISTINA: Lady lady.
PENNY: "who in their writings succeeded so well in interestingly holding the attention ot children, is a very pleasant book."
EMILY: Pleasant. Well that's a 3 star on Goodreads really isn't it, a pleasant book
CHRISTINA: Had lots of pleasant thoughts reading this pleasant book.
PENNY: "We have a large number and variety of Miss Greenaway's delightful children, with their quaintly antique attire, oddly formal but always graceful attitudes, and their solemn features and wonderfully grave eyes. We have also many of their equally delightful mammas, with their soft slender forms, high-waisted dresses, and limp clinging drapery, children and mammas grouped as prettily as possible, and always so as really to illustrate and give character and meaning to the poem to which they are appended.”
It's very important to clump the mammas and the children together attractively. And if we had a tip for authors and illustrators today that would be it, wouldn't it? Clump ya mammas and your kids together
CHRISTINA: Mamma clump
EMILY: The groups that she draws are
PENNY: Delightful clumps
EMILY: Very delightful. But obviously by our standards, I mean, all of the women have the exact same figure, which is the figure of someone who does not eat very much. They're all the exact same colour.
CHRISTINA: No-one's back from Bali.
EMILY: It's the late 1800s, it's not a huge surprise, looking at it now.
PENNY: Yeah, but she was, this is a very review of the ladies' work. Do you read reviews of your books?
EMILY: I really protect myself now.
PENNY: Do you?
EMILY: Yeah. Because.
PENNY: That's disciplined.
EMILY: It's so easy to put me off. And I think I've taken a lot of arrows over the years so now I really protect myself. I have read some terrible reviews of my work. I think the worse they are, the better.
PENNY: Oh yeah, cos then it gets funny.
EMILY: Then it's funny. There is one on Goodreads that says 'Do not read unless insane'. Which I love.
PENNY: There's one of my first book, 'Loving Richard Feynman' that says 'A terrible book about a nerd'.
EMILY: See that's a good review. I'd even put that on the front.
PENNY: Yeah, I reckon that's a pull quote.
EMILY: Reissue that, and put that on the front. That's a seller. No, now I do really protect myself. I might start to read the top and then if I think it's quite alright I'll finish it. But often I'll go, 'Oh no, no, that sounds like they didn't like it'.
PENNY: So even if it's like the official ones in publications, like if, you won't read those either? Does your publicist send it to you? If they sent it to you and you knew it was positive would you read it?
EMILY: Absolutely. If the publicist sends it, I'm reading it. And that's lovely. Why not have the warm glow of your years of hard work. But I don't go and seek them out anymore.
PENNY: So disciplined.
EMILY: I sort of think, what's the point? Because everybody is entitled to have their opinion of my work but I am not obliged to listen to every single opinion.
PENNY: So, one thing that does happen occasionally is that someone, an author, will read a review and they respond to it.
EMILY: Oh dear, please don't.
PENNY: Is there any circumstances in which that?
EMILY: Well, I have to confess that I did once reply to a review privately to ask that they remove, and it was a very, it wasn't just an ordinary reader having their say, it was, I'm not gonna say what it was because I might get into trouble, but it was a big publication and they had put a huge, the main spoiler of the book was in the review and they didn't like it and they didn't like my writing. That's fine, but I said, 'Can you please take out the spoiler?' Because I feel like that's not really the point of your review.
PENNY: And did they?
EMILY: They said they would, yeah. And I wasn't asking them to take out anything negative if they could please remove the spoiler.
PENNY: And then you did a spray on Twitter.
EMILY: I didn't.
CHRISTINA: Just let it out.
EMILY: I really didn't. But it did teach me to keep away even in that respect. Just don't have an interaction with a reviewer.
PENNY: And it happens in comedy too.
CHRISTINA: I remember someone said that I was the most Australian sounding comedian that they'd ever heard, and I was like, oh.
EMILY: Was that? Was that a negative?
CHRISTINA: I don't know. It just made me think I sounded like one of the Minogue sisters, like a really nasal twang. And I thought, 'No, Hughsey sounds more Aussie'
PENNY: Yes! I mean that's a factual error and you should get in touch.
CHRISTINA: I don't know why, that really grated on me, I didn't like it.
EMILY: I wouldn't think that that was a negative though, sounding. Why is it bad to sound?
CHRISTINA: I don't know, it just made me feel like I was a bit true-blue and ocker or something. I didn't like it. But what about the content of what I was saying? Rather than how I'm saying it.
EMILY: Yes, that's true.
PENNY: But ever so often a comedian will also go on a twitter and complain about a review. And that never goes well either. Unless it's like overtly racist or something.
EMILY: Oh sure, that's totally different but if it's just you know, your writing's a bit pedestrian. Oh well, tough. That's just what they think.
CHRISTINA: When you put stuff out into the public sphere, you need to be prepared to cop it.
PENNY: Yeah, pretty much.
EMILY: So if you don't like it, then just don't read it. Let people have their opinions. You put your work out there, it doesn't even belong to you anymore it's for someone else. It's for a reader to have a relationship with.
PENNY: I see it as kind of like the price of getting to express yourself and also all of the nice things that happen as a result. It can't just all be people telling you how great you are.
EMILY: I was just gonna say about the review situation. The artist Whistler was one that my family were very supportive of.
PENNY: Whistler? This is the thing, Emily's kind of like, 'Oh, they had this little art gallery, it was in London'. I looked it up. It was a very significant art gallery with all of the most famous artists of the time.
EMILY: they were very good at finding people and giving them a go. But yeah they had this relationship with Whistler, who they loved. He was a bit of a character. But he sued John Ruskin, who, the art critic, for libel, because John Ruskin had said something like, Whistler’s work was just like chucking a pot of paint at a canvass and he felt it lacked the moral fiber that he felt art should have.
PENNY: Well, we'll get to his moral fiber.
EMILY: But anyway, Whistler won, but he was only compensated with a farthing.
PENNY: But it was a moral victory.
CHRISTINA: It was the principle.
EMILY: There you go. Don't sue your reviewers for libel because you will only possibly win a farthing.
PENNY: Yeah we're going to talk about Kate Greenaway's relationship with Ruskin now. Kate Greenaway was admired by many people during her life. John Ruskin was one of her biggest supporters in some ways. And he, I didn't know much about him. He was a Victorian writer, philosopher, art critic, did a lot of lectures, went around and
EMILY: He wrote so much.
PENNY: Superstar. I think he was quite charismatic, lots of people'd come and listen to him talk and stuff. He thought Greenaway was a genius and he told her so. Then he started a correspondence with her. And I think there were, almost every day for three years he wrote to her.
EMILY: And then he completely stopped writing to her. But she kept writing to him.
PENNY: But he admired her greatly. But he also gave her a lot of feedback.
EMILY: Yes he did.
37:10 PENNY: I'll start reading this article and then we can talk more about this relationship.
So this is from the Australasian from 30th of December 1905. So by this stage Greenaway and John Ruskin have died and his letters have been published.
"That Ruskin was the friend of Kate Greenaway is well known, but it is not so well known that, as encourager and critic of her art, he was continually trying in vain to spur her to studies from the nude. Miss Greenaway's graceful pencil always seemed to him to give too much of garments, too little of form. In the biography of the lady by Messrs. Spielmann and Layard there are such passages as the following from Ruskin's letters, pleading for the "altogether":--
Which was a way
EMILY: The altogether. The nude.
PENNY: So this is from John Ruskin's letter to Greenaway:
"This cloud lady is very"
Shall I do a voice?
EMILY: Yes. Do John Ruskin's voice.
PENNY: I mean I don't know what he sounded like.
CHRISTINA: I need to look him up.
PENNY: "This cloud lady is very lovely,"
EMILY: That's uncanny.
PENNY: "and you really must draw her again for me without any clothes, because you've suggested a perfect coalheaver's leg, which I can't think you meant', and you must draw your figures now undraped for a while—Nobody wants anatomy,—but you can't, get on without Form."
So let's remember that she drew a lot of children. So he was asking for children to be drawn in the nude. And Ruskin came up with excuses for this like, 'Oh it's for art. It's to help you develop" but there were other things in his life I think that suggest he was generally interested in kids in the nude. Do you think that's fair?
EMILY: I don't know. He certainly was very interested in young women. And married, well no, his first wife was only 10 years younger than him I think. I don't think that what he's saying there is complete insight into him being a pervert. I do think he genuinely wanted to help to develop Kate Greenaway 's artistic skill. And she obviously went to an art school but she wouldn't have been allowed to do that. So I don't think that that's necessarily like a clue but there are other things in his life that do suggest that he really had a penchant for much young women.
PENNY: He did ask her quite a few times.
EMILY: Yes. And he was very opinionated about her work and he would criticise the way she drew feet and hands and there is something in that. If you study her feet and hands they're not perfect feet and hands. She did draw very modestly dressed children.
CHRISTINA: Mammas.
EMILY: And Mammas. And I think she was much more interested in faces, and the eyes and the little serious faces and so on. Though he did influence her. He told her to take all the darkness out of her books and she did.
PENNY: Oh that's weird.
EMILY: In her first book 'Under the Window' there are witches and there are other fantasy, on the the darker side.
PENNY: And she did listen to him on that?
EMILY: And she did listen to him and she stopped drawing those sorts of things.
PENNY: Oh that's interesting. His letter continues and I won't do the voice now.
"I'll forgive you the pig!—but we must draw dogs a little better. And we must learn just the rudiments of perspective—and draw feet and ankles—and—a little above and purple and blue things-and- the sun not like a drop of sealing-wax - and then -Well - we'll do all that first, won't we?
Oh, dear, think how happy you are with all that power of drawing—and ages to come to work in and paint Fionas and Norahs and Fairies and Marys and Goddesses and —bodices—oh. me. when will you do me one without any?"
CHRISTINA: Ew.
EMILY: Yeah that doesn't sound great, does it?
PENNY: He's dropped the artistic reasoning there.
EMILY: I mean if you think that Kate Greenaway kept drawing the exact same way she always drew.
PENNY: And she just ignored him. He kept asking for nudes and she just pretended he never said anything.
EMILY: She knew exactly what she wanted out of her art and out of the books she was creating. She was not going to be persuaded to do something different because she really wanted children to have this gorgeous sort of innocent book to look at.
PENNY: So how important do you find feedback when you're developing something?
EMILY: Yeah very, very important. And I always take it very, very badly in the first minute. Terribly. I react so badly. Privately though. Because I'm very good at internalising things. And then once it settles and I process it I think, 'Oh God yeah I'm so glad that this person is pushing me.'
PENNY: Because that's so interesting because the other part of your work is you do manuscript assessments and you give the feedback. So that must be.
EMILY: Yeah, so my reports are always like, 'look, I know this is going to hit you like a ton of bricks. I know it is and I'm really sorry that it is but this is the work that you have to do'. And everybody has to do it, unless you're an absolute genius who never needs any feedback, which is 1 in a million. So much of this industry is about coming back to your desk and rewriting it.
PENNY: Emily once helped me. I was trying to write a book in a series and the publisher did not like my first attempt and gave me feedback and I just couldn't understand what, I couldn't see what I was meant to do. So Emily read the first chapter and it was so brilliant. Like it was just. She made me feel better about it first. And I knew exactly what you were doing but it still worked. Like you made me feel better about it then you gave me some really concrete things that I could change and then I was like, 'I know what to do now.' Whereas before I felt like the feedback was just 'This is not good enough'. And I was like 'What am I, ergh, urgh?'
EMILY: And people like different things. I do give very creative feedback but I always say, 'Look, this is just how my brain has taken your work but you must get your creative brain to take it. All I'm telling you is there's another way to do this. And if there's one other way there's three other ways.' There's always another way to make it work better. So all you need to understand is why it's not working right now and then come back to that point and go in a slightly different direction.
PENNY: It was really, really helpful. Cos I was about to get the sack.
EMILY: It can feel so horrible. And you can feel so at sea when you get editorial feedback that doesn't give you any kind of life raft. And this would be for every industry. I mean you would get told how you're doing in your job just as much as we would?
CHRISTINA: Yep. Sometimes when I don't ask. Sometimes parents have a lot of thoughts and feelings about it.
PENNY: Sometimes probably loud thoughts and feelings too. Which we're lucky not to have in our industry. Very little shouting.
EMILY: I think we're mostly very protected from things
CHRISTINA: From shouters.
EMILY: Though children can be very blunt. But it's always delivered so gorgeously that you sort of think 'Fair enough. I should have made this book shorter. You're right.'
CHRISTINA: Do you always get that question from kids, every time we have an author out, 'Where do you get your ideas from'? Every. Time.
PENNY: And usually after you've just been talking for half an hour about
EMILY: A slide that says, 'Where do I get my ideas from'
CHRISTINA: I think kids sometimes go into those things with their question in their head and refuse to listen to any
EMILY: Well sometimes school talks are quite long.
PENNY: Yes.
EMILY: Adults aren't necessarily good at listening for that long. Sometimes it's an hour.
CHRISTINA: Ten to 15 minutes. That's enough.
EMILY: Exactly. That's why I prefer doing workshops in schools.
CHRISTINA: It's like I used to get booked to do stand-up comedy for Principal's Associations and so on. And they'd be like 'Just for like 45 minutes'. I'm like 'No.'
PENNY: That's a show.
CHRISTINA: No-one is wanting that. 10 minutes. Max. That's all.
EMILY: But that's how long. This year all of my school talks were an hour.
PENNY: Yeah, they just want to fill a lesson.
CHRISTINA: That's a lesson.
EMILY: Which is great when you've got them in a classroom and they've got a piece of paper and you can get them doing things.
CHRISTINA: But if they're free-range in the library. Forget it.
EMILY: If they're just sitting there.
CHRISTINA: No.
EMILY: That takes some very good sitting still skills.
CHRISTINA: Which most don't have, let's face it.
EMILY: So I like to get them on their feet to do a little demonstration sometimes just so they get the blood moving a little bit.
PENNY: So, I did find another article that mentioned John Ruskin because his mental health declined quite a lot towards the end of his life and that might have been part of the reason he stopped writing to her.
EMILY: Yes.
PENNY: Also we should say that their correspondence was platonic but she thought that it might be leading up to marriage but he was
EMILY: I think she knew the sort of woman he was interested in. And she always thought of herself as very plain and she was very shy. So I don't really think she thought she was in with a chance but I think she might have been a bit in love with him.
46:23 PENNY: And she seems to have sort of stuck by him even when he was having a lot of trouble. This was a really catty literary column that I found from Adelaide Quiz from the 9th of May 1890.
"John Ruskin's insanity takes a troublesome form at times. When he becomes frantic he jumps out of bed and smashes all the windows in his room. One day when he was very quiet Kate Greenaway came to sketch in his garden. Ruskin suddenly appeared, took the brush from her hand, and began to daub her dress with, paint, designing a costume far more grotesque than any she had ever depicted in her popular sketches."
EMILY: That's awful. I mean the depiction of mental were so terrible. Well they were terrible 20 years ago so look what they were like in the 1800s. No compassion what-so-ever.
PENNY: But she was obviously still visiting him.
EMILY: She was really, really devoted to him and I think she only died a year after he did.
PENNY: That's right. She was really probably still grieving him.
EMILY: She had breast cancer but she didn't tell people so she was just quietly ill and then quietly died. And she was in her 50s so she was very young.
PENNY: And her career I think really peaked in the 1880s and then in the 1890s it's hard to maintain popularity over a really
EMILY: She stopped as well. She started just doing little paintings and things like that she wasn't really doing the books anymore. But then after death there was a revival I think after her, maybe in the '30s. I think there have been various revivals. I mean obviously my book was 1970s.
PENNY: Is she still in print?
EMILY: I think occasionally you'll get like a collection or something like that.
47:56 PENNY: There's another article. This is actually after her death now from the Adelaide Observer 24th of February 1906. It's titled:
"CHILDREN'S DRESS-PAST AND PRESENT.
It is now five years since the death of Kate Greenaway, the gentle child-lover, who, with her clever pencil, waged cease less war against the ugliness in the world;"
Which is kind of what you were saying.
EMILY: yeah, yeah.
PENNY: "but the publication of her correspondence with John Ruskin has made the lovely personality of this gracious woman and artist seem even more real than it was while she lived. She was one of the small trans-figured band of those who loved Art for itself, and followed her inspiration heedless of the opinions of others, even of Ruskin, who, while he admired her work without stint, tried in vain to make her alter her methods according to his own views,"
Which is also
EMILY: That's a lovely thing for people to take from it, isn't it. Just keep following your own path. Keep believing in your own instincts. I think that's a really good message for any creator.
PENNY: It's really hard though I think to know when do you do that and when do you need feedback cos its another perspective that's helpful.
EMILY: But I think that the editorial feedback should be addressing what you've created not telling you to create a completely different thing.
PENNY: Maybe the thing is you've gotta get over that initial reaction that you had. Give it some time, like you were saying. The first minute 'Nargh'.
EMILY: There's a sweet spot. I always say this in my assessments. 'Don't ask me questions until you've thought about this for 2 weeks. Then ask me all the questions you want about the assessment. And don't leave it more than 3 months cos then it will be stale.' But that's the kind of sweet spot where you can ask me anything you didn't understand in my report. Let's have a conversation about it. But not straight away because you are reacting, you're very raw. You've been hit with criticism sometimes pages long and I think you just need to sit with that.
PENNY: That's good advice I think. So:
"Kate Greenawav lived a retired life: she was narrow, and she was not a great artist, but she was herself, and trusted herself, hence her success in revolutionizing the dressing of the children of two continents."
So this is often mentioned as her very big legacy. And see this is funny because I look at an old fashioned book and I think, 'Oh yeah, that's what kids wore in those days'. Not true. She did not draw children as they were at that time. Cos children's clothing was very restrictive and there was a bit of a fashion for dressing them up just like women and wearing very tight clothes and things and she put them in these lovely draping.
EMILY: So she was really drawing her grandparents.
PENNY: So it was old-fashioned at the time, which is hard for us to realise.
EMILY: But then I think that we in various decades have gone back to those things. Definitely I wore little smock dresses. I mean, not really long ones like this but definitely with that kind of smocking on the chest.
CHRISTINA: Yeah, same.
EMILY: And the puffy sleeve. But it would only have come to my knee.
PENNY: And so, can you think of any other authors who've had that kind of influence on fashion?
EMILY: Not sure in terms of a whole style, I guess in specific items. Like I've got a Paddington Bear coat.
PENNY: Oh yeah.
EMILY: And I love putting that on and thinking about Paddington Bear and his marmalade sandwiches. I think about it every time.
PENNY: Little Lord Fauntleroy was another one from about that time that created a style.
EMILY: And I think definitely authors have created characters that people have then wanted to look more like. Like Holly Golightly. Like who doesn't want to wear the lovely elegant black dress and a choker and we might associate it now with Audrey Hepburn but the creation of those very stylish characters in the first place. But I don't think in terms of creating a whole line of clothes like Kate Greenaway. Like Liberty’s of London created clothes so that people could dress like a Kate Greenaway book.
PENNY: Yeah and it was called a Greenaway costume.
"Before her time the clothing of children lacked grace in such a marked degree that plain ones looked ugly, and even the prettiest could not be anything but plain."
God I wish there was a dress that I could just put on that would take me like up that step.
CHRISTINA: Elevate you to that point.
EMILY: I always look at pictures of lovely flowing dresses and think I would like to wear one and then as soon as I put one on I feel like I'm wearing a bed sheet and I've got to take it off and put my jeans on. I aspire to wear a dress but so far.
PENNY: "Kate Greenaway hated child millinery, and the grotesque little caricatures of men and women that represented child dressing in the days of her youth. But when her pencil began to express the prettiness of children their grace and delightful ways, and garbed them in simple and exquisitely graceful garments, a change came over the dressing of little people. It was felt at once that their slender little forms required quite a different style of clothing from that of grown-ups. Then came in the dainty smock with its plain straight lines and absence of constriction, and the sun bonnet of muslin and silk, a headgear that makes even the plainest child look at least interesting."
CHRISTINA: Get a bonnet on that kid.
PENNY: Have you tried putting a bonnet on it.
CHRISTINA: It's not an attractive one. Put a bonnet on it.
EMILY: Oh I love old newspapers.
PENNY: That is very, I mean, that's success you know.
EMILY: That's influence. She was just quietly getting on with it and just quietly influencing how children were being dressed.
PENNY: Yeah.
"Kate Greenaway was a great artist in her own line, a fact which we seem to be in danger of forgetting, but one which was fully realized by Ruskin. whose letters to her—"one for nearlv each day for three years"—are packed with appreciation of the exquisite beauty and delicacy of her delineations of child life. And yet it is a fact that Max Nordau, who for some reason or other is looked upon as a critic of note, considered this charming lady, who loved the nursery and laughter, as a "de-generate" and a ''decadent."
I don't know what that bit is at the end.
EMILY: I love that. I love that review.
PENNY: I haven't looked up Max Nordau, but I don't like him.
EMILY: No, he sounds awful. But also she was an artist but also she was an illustrator she was illustrating for children. She's not exhibiting at the National Portrait Gallery and she's doing things in her way. I think that maybe they are holding her to a standard that she wasn't trying to reach.
PENNY: Yeah, she's trying to make the pictures interesting for a child to look at in a book.
EMILY: She's trying to make it accessible to a child. I remember just looking at their faces. I really really remembered that I would always look at the expressions of the children.
PENNY: We mentioned this a little bit at the start but there's something called the Greenaway Medal.
EMILY: There has been. For many decades the Kate Greenaway Medal
PENNY: And it's a UK award for illustration and it's alongside the Carnegie Medal. And then what happened?
EMILY: Sort of quietly I think they decided to remove Kate Greenaway's name from the medal.
PENNY: Which happens sometimes, often understandable reasons, think more about their life and think 'That's not'
CHRISTINA: Doesn't align with
PENNY: But I don't think that was the case
EMILY: No. I mean she was obviously a paragon of innocence and purity. I mean there was no dark side to Kate Greenaway what-so-ever so she hasn't been cancelled. She has been quietly removed. The argument from the body that decided to do that was that they wanted to bring the illustration in-line with the writing medal, which is the Carnegie Medal for literature.
PENNY: So both would be named after a man.
EMILY: Yes. So the Carnegie Medal is named after Andrew Carnegie who was in steel and was one of the richest men in the world and who then gave most of his money away including many, many libraries.
PENNY: Yeah, so that's why you see so many Carnegie Institutes.
EMILY: That's why it's called the Carnegie Medal. But he was a much more complicated and dark figure than Kate Greenaway.
CHRISTINA: Yeah.
EMILY: It would be a little bit like well if Jeff Bezos gives away all his money now let's have the Jeff Bezos Medal for Literature. And I think a lot of people would not enjoy that.
CHRISTINA: Probably not, no.
EMILY: The Elon Musk Medal for illustration. Who wants to win that? You know so I think a lot of illustrators and authors were very upset, and librarians, were very upset when Kate Greenaway 's name was removed and there was a petition that was started by a librarian and an author, which gained a lot of signatures. But no, it is now known as the Yoto Carnegie Medal.
PENNY: Who is Yoto?
EMILY: Yoto are an audiobook company and they sponsor the award.
PENNY: For illustration?
EMILY: For illustration.
PENNY: Audiobooks that famous vehicle for illustrations.
CHRISTINA: Just picture it in your head kids.
EMILY: So I think it's sad. And I don't think that it's necessarily about, it must always be called the Kate Greenaway. But I think if you're going to quietly remove a woman who came from a working class background and gained international success on her terms what are you saying to the world really when you're keeping the name of Andrew Carnegie whose business practices caused the death of many people and the deprivations of many families in order to become the richest man in the world, many people suffered.
PENNY: So she was kind of illustrating books to take children's mind off the suffering that he was causing.
EMILY: Exactly.
CHRISTINA: It's a vicious cycle.
EMILY: Yes. Because his attitude to business was cut costs for anything. Cut worker's wages. Increase their hours. Increase production. Whatever you need to do and that made him extremely rich. So complicated man and a not very complicated and lovely woman. So that's why I think this is quite an interesting debate to be had in terms of how we name awards and who we honor and who we quietly get rid of.
PENNY: The other thing is awards even when people don't understand the whole history of it they kind of develop a history like people know about the Greenaway Medal and that's the thing that they want to get.
EMILY: Illustrators would love to win the Greenaway Medal. It's the legacy that is not about whether the best at drawing feet. It's about she had a whole career from a not such a poor working class background, obviously her parents were in work and she had art lessons so it's not like she came from the streets or whatever, don't want to sort of over-egg that.
PENNY: But I think it's also very inspirational for those of us who can't draw feet.
EMILY: Exactly.
CHRISTINA: You could still do a really good
EMILY: Pop a little shoe on it and you don't have to show the feet at all.
CHRISTINA: No, exactly.
PENNY: Obviously, you're great at bones so
CHRISTINA: I mean, that's right.
PENNY: They don't need shoes. That'll be fine.
CHRISTINA: No shoes required. Strip it back.
PENNY: Thank you so much Emily. Now, where is the best place for people to find you?
EMILY: Probably my newsletter, which is called Voracious and it's a Substack newsletter, which you can have delivered to your inbox if you like, or you can just visit Substack where there are lots of amazing newsletters I really recommend it and it's great for a bit more long-form reading and getting away from that scrolling that we've been doing for the past few years.
PENNY: Yes, I think that's very true but put Emily's at the top of your list.
EMILY: Thank you so much for having me it was such a delight to talk about this quite niche subject but you sort of take it in lots of directions, which is nice.
59:35 (piano music)
59:45 EMILY: That was funny. I wish you had recorded you saying 'I haven't pressed record' cos that was very dramatic and good.
CHRISTINA: Yes.
PENNY: Imagine if I'd left it.
CHRISTINA: I was really not sure what was happening. I'm like, 'Penny usually just goes with the flow, what's going on?'
PENNY: Well, we know where we're going now.
CHRISTINA: Yes.
EMILY: We'll just say the exact same words.
CHRISTINA: Absolutely.
EMILY: In the exact same order.
CHRISTINA: Yep. I remember everything I said.