Katie Lumsden is a literary force to be reckoned with. A scholar, author, editor, and beloved BookTuber, she has devoted her life to exploring the rich tapestry of the Regency and Victorian eras. With a keen eye for historical detail and a passion for storytelling, Lumsden effortlessly transports readers to a world of opulent ballrooms, scandalous secrets, and unforgettable characters. Her deep-rooted love affair with literature began at thirteen with Jane Eyre, igniting a lifelong fascination with the complexities and allure of the past. Armed with advanced degrees in English literature and creative writing, Lumsden is uniquely qualified to illuminate the captivating worlds she brings to life on the page and screen.
Katie Lumsden: The Writer, The Editor, The Booktuber
Bookish history buff Katie Lumsden wears many literary hats. She reads. She writes. She does freelance editing. She’s an expert on Victorian literature. She demonstrates all these things and more on her YouTube channel, Books and Things. Katie found her passion for Victorian literature at just thirteen years old after enjoying her first read-through of Jane Eyre — and she’s been wooing us with the era ever since. With a degree in English literature and history from the University of Durham and an MA in creative writing from Bath Spa University, Katie Lumsden is well-equipped to transport readers to the past.
The Regency and Victorian eras, rich in societal intricacies, fashion, romance, and scandals, make up the atmospheric backdrop for many iconic stories. Regency fiction typically refers to the period between 1795 and 1837, characterized by authors like Jane Austen and the era’s distinctly refined manners and social expectations. Victorian fiction picks up after this, spanning the reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1901, featuring literary favorites like Charles Dickens and the birth of Gothic-style mysteries. Katie Lumsden is known for her ability to use faultless historical details in her novels to bring these eras to life on the page. Whether it’s a mysterious manor, a lavish ballroom, or a bustling London street, Lumsden’s writing immerses readers in a bygone world — where romance, intrigue, and adventure await!
Books by Katie Lumsden
The Secrets of Hartwood Hall
This chilling gothic mystery is an atmospheric love letter to Victorian fiction. The year is 1852. A young widow named Margaret Lennox has just become governess to an only child named Louis and moves into an isolated country house in the west of England. Even before Margaret is fully settled into her new role, she senses that something is amiss. Strange figures lurk in the shadows, an abandoned wing of the house seems to hold secrets, and tensions are stewing among the servants. Working her way through local gossip and forbidden relationships, Margaret unravels the truth behind what really happened at Hartwood Hall.
The Trouble with Mrs Montgomery Hurst
This witty historical fiction novel is set in the summer of 1841. Mr. Montgomery Hurst of Radcliffe Park is getting married. The county of Wickenshire is in shock and awe, for he has chosen an impoverished widow with three children to be his bride. They were expecting someone like the daughter of an earl. As if that wasn’t enough gossip for one community, a Miss Amelia Ashpoint — a woman now in her twenties — is being pressured by her father to land a husband before it’s too late, and he has his hopes set on Mr. Montgomery Hurst. This leads to a series of events full of social intrigue and leaked secrets and scandals. What makes this one a fun read is the way Katie Lumsden accurately captures the style of Victorian-era manners, gossip, and cheekiness.
Bookstr’s Burning Questions
In this exclusive interview, the Bookstr team asked Katie Lumsden three hot-topic questions about reading and writing. Katie was all too ready to dish on her biggest bookish passions! Plus, she discusses how BookTube changed her approach to writing.
Why do you love books so much?
Partly, of course, just because books are the best. Books are amazing and such a delight. I love the escapism you get from books. The ability to step into someone else’s world and learn about that world and experience someone else’s life and someone else’s story for a while. I also enjoy how much I learn from books and how much I learn about other experiences, points in time, history, and so much more just from reading. But I also find reading incredibly relaxing, and the pleasure and calmness that reading brings me is something I really really value. But most of all, I think I love reading because reading is fun!
I really like how many other hobbies have kind of sprung from my love of books. I love reading books, but I also work as an editor and a writer, and I love editing books and writing books. I love collecting books and gathering lots of beautiful books around me. You know, I love books as physical objects as well as the stories that they bring me. I have a BookTube channel, and I love talking about books. There’s just so much that books have added to my life, and there are so many ways in which books have enriched my life. They’ll always be incredibly important to me.
What do you love most about historical fiction?
I think something I really love about historical fiction is getting to discover another world and step into another world. When it comes to history, I love social and cultural history. I love the history of individual people’s lives. And when you read historical fiction, you often are getting that, yes, it’s a fictional history, but you’re getting this focus on an individual person going about their life and living their everyday life in a particular place or time in the past. And that is really, really interesting.
I’m also someone who reads a lot of classics and a lot of books that were published in the past. I love reading those books a lot, and you get a real kind of authentic sense of the past when you’re reading classics from that time. What I love about historical fiction is how you can get a different perspective or new angle on the past. Maybe a modern writer can write about the past in a way that someone at that time just wouldn’t have been able to write about it. Or they can write from the perspective of someone whose voice wouldn’t have been heard as much at the time. Or looking at themes that weren’t kind of discussed in society at that point in time in the same way that they can be now. That’s something that I think is really valuable in historical fiction, and it can often give us a really interesting and unique view of the past.
And I think all of those things are true both for being a reader of historical fiction and a writer of historical fiction. Looking at the past in a slightly different way is something I really love to do as a writer.
How has being a booktuber influenced your approach to writing?
I think there are probably a number of different ways that BookTube has influenced my writing. It’s kind of hard to tell because I have been writing for a very long time, since I was a young teenager, but I have also been doing BookTube and making videos about books on YouTube now for a very long time, for about nine years. Making Booktube videos and being part of the BookTube community has definitely given me a really big kind of market awareness and awareness of what books are out there, what books people love, and what books people are talking about and why people love the books that they love. Booktube has definitely taught me a lot about that, as has working as an editor in the publishing industry in the UK. That has probably influenced the way that I write and made me more aware of kind of writing with a specific audience in mind, or writing, trying to think about how the reader would be reacting.
I also think that starting and growing a Booktube channel has probably taught me lots of valuable lessons to kind of bring to my career as an author. I think when you get a novel published, it can be easy to have all these dreams of sort of overnight huge success and things like that. Which, you know, does happen for some people, but a lot of the time, that isn’t what happens. A lot of the time, it is a slower journey. When you have a YouTube channel, that is also what happens. It is a very slow process, and you gain subscribers and followers over time, and you learn more about it as you do it. And I think that’s quite a useful lesson to kind of bring to being an author and having a career as an author as well.
Past Perfect: Where History Meets Fiction
Verily, Katie Lumsden hath quilled wondrous tales, penning historical fiction with finesse like that of the best Victorian seamstresses. Her novels dost transport readers to an era of scandalous intrigue and secrets waiting to be discovered. Seek her presence in the Twitterverse (@katiejlumsden) or venture forth to her Instagram (@katiejlumsden) to stay up to date on all her literary escapades. You can also join her merry band of bibliophiles by visiting her website where a digital carriage drawn by Victorian horses awaits thee. Read her books, guys! We promise ‘tis a blast from the past most splendid!
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