What a good question. What a very, very good question. I hadn’t thought about it, but I started to do so. From that simple question came the basic idea for Glamour in Glass. It is a subject that Jane Austen did not touch on directly in her books, but you can see the effects that children have on a woman of her period by looking around the edges of her stories. Those attitudes had as strong an influence on Jane Vincent’s feelings about her ‘situation’ as Mr. Brin’s question. I am indebted to them both for the kernel of the novel.

The errors are mine alone, but I had some useful assistance in reducing the number of those errors and would like to take a moment to acknowledge the people who helped me avoid the worst of the anachronisms.

Thanks to the Oregon Regency Society, who helped me get a better understanding of the period, as well as having lovely excursions and balls. I need to particularly thank Charlotte Cunningham and Nora Fosberg Azevedo for their friendship and support. Also thanks to Tara Ryan and Christian Valois for looking at the French details of the Empire and to Madeleine Robins, who gave the whole thing a last minute going over for period details. Mr. David Koch, a New York City carriage driver, took considerable time to talk to me about carriages and how the gait of a horse affects the ride.

Of course, I would be remiss if I did not thank my editor, Liz Gorinsky, who suggested the closing scene. My agent, Jennifer Jackson, is amazing and spots plot problems before I even start writing. The erstwhile Michael Curry, who turns up as Major Curry, is a perceptive reader and gives me very clear feedback, without coddling. Thanks as well to all those who make the book look good: the inimitable Irene Gallo, Tor’s art director; Cassandra Ammerman, my always able publicist; my copyeditor, Susan Andrew; production editor Elizabeth Curione; the wonderful cover artist Larry Rostant; and the cover designer, Jamie Stafford-Hill, as well as the book designer, Nicola Ferguson.

Writing a historical, even an alternate history, is always fraught with the pitfall of What Really Happened. The most difficult scene in this regard was when Jane rescues Vincent, because I had originally had Vincent held in a chicken coop. You see, I needed a way for him to be contained, yet able to be reached without going into shadow, and also plausibly somewhat obscured. The problem is that the book is set in 1815 and chicken wire wasn’t invented until 1847. There are times when I can fudge history, but this gap was too large, because if they had chicken wire, then there was a whole host of other technologies that they would have had as well. Attempting to come up with a different way to secure him, which met my constraints, drove me to distraction.