Portfolio
Hello, my name is Thomas Hamby, and I’m thrilled to know that you’re interested in my work. I invite you to explore my portfolio, where I showcase a selection of my writings and the inspirations and musings behind them.
Sanditon - HEA Found
Jane Austen began writing her last Novel, Sanditon, in 1817, wrote 12 Chapters and then put it aside and with her death the same year, never finished it! There have been several efforts to finish it satisfactorily but, well, no one is Jane Austen! The latest effort was a 2019 series production for television led by Andrew Davies. It was cancelled after one season and left many with a very unsatisfactory cliffhanger, again leaving the world with an unfinished Sanditon story as Jane Austen left it with her untimely death.
There are hopes a second season will follow with the same cast but the beauty of the story, the chemistry of the cast and the unsatisfactory ending stimulated me to write my own Season 2 to finish Jane Austen’s story in a way I believe she would have, with a Happy Ever After ending! The short chapters were written in a step outline format which can be turned into a screenplay for an eight Episode Season 2.
Since completing my Sanditon Season 2, I have also written a critique or an analysis of many of the scenes in Andrew Davies’ Sanditon Season 1 most of which are included here as well. I hope you will enjoy exploring with me my ideas about how Jane Austen’s unfinished final novel might reach its required HEA conclusion and my insight into the beauty and frustration of Andrew Davies’ unfinished Sanditon as well.
And I would like to thank my friend and fabulous painter Marjan de Jonge for the beautiful book cover which I know all fans of Jane Austen and Sanditon will appreciate and love as I do!
April/May 2020
Sanditon on Reflection
Jane Austen began her last novel, Sanditon, in 1817 and wrote twelve chapters before putting it aside. With her death the same year, she never finished it.
Sanditon on Reflection is a regency era romantic mystery that tells the rest of the story as seen through the eyes of Jane Austen’s heroine, Charlotte Heywood. This telling of Charlotte’s story begins before Jane Austen’s does in 1812 on a farm in the English village of Willingden near the south coast of England.
She lives there with very limited access to the rest of the world, except through her books and dreams until, one day in 1818, a happenstance on a ”very rough Lane” gains her a sojourn away from her village to Sanditon, a fishing village with aspirations of becoming a fashionable seaside resort.
Hosted by Tom Parker, the eccentric mastermind behind the scheme, and his wife, Mary, Charlotte finds herself right in the heart of Sanditon society, which includes Tom’s brother Sidney Parker, “of about seven or eight and twenty” and “very good-looking.” But is he what he seems and can she trust her instincts and her heart in this new world?
The hazards of love and an intriguing mystery test Charlotte’s character and conviction in ways she would never have imagined. The secret behind that mystery and the choices she must make in a Regency world filled with intrigue, avarice and obsession will shake Charlotte to the core as she faces challenges to know herself and her past as she seeks to find love and that all important HEA.
Random Thoughts - Jane Austen
(The last entries in Jane Austen’s Diary on the day before her death.)
Diary: 17 July 1817
I am cold today even by the fire. Why I wonder do I feel the need for it? Cassandra took me to task for asking it, though she complied, and why would she not! There is the warmth of July after all, not the cold of December as when I was born. Would that I could be in back in Chawton or in the South by the sea or anywhere else except this confining little room in Winchester. And I do believe the sea should lift my flagging spirits. “A Little Sea-bathing would set me up for ever”.
I was feeling particularly poorly yesterday. My sickness has bothered me greatly in recent days. And today, it gave me cause to sincerely regret leaving my writing behind in Chawton. I am feeling the need for some distraction and my pen always takes me to a place of solace as my body now cannot. “The Brothers”, I do wish I might have found the strength for it. There in remains a story that I wish to tell and perhaps still I shall. I myself should have liked returning to Southhampton, by the sea. But the charms of Brother Edward’s gift of Chawton cottage also cannot be gainsaid. I miss it dreadfully. My heart is not mine, nor is my pen, my wit, my mind. Yes, to write was to dream and then to find them in my books. What more could I have wished!
I did dream last night. I have not dreamt in my remembrance in a great while. There was something of my childhood in my sleep this night last. My night sweats which greatly have bothered my sleep left me for the night, a rare blessing. But, my dream. It was something bright and clear. Where I was I do not know, but I was in the sun, walking carefree and with the energy remembered of my youth, something I have not felt in many a year. And my Father, The Reverend Austen, he was there. I had not remembered his look in many years but he was clear in my mind, in my dreams. And Madam Lefroy killed these many years ago, also. And Thomas was there. My Tom. What am I to make of it all?
I think today about my books. They are something of life and love and hope. Hope is what I have to rid myself of this illness that I may find myself again engaged with my pen. Yes, those women in my books, Lizzy, Emma, Anne, Elinor and more, they found the happiness that I could not. They overcame what I could not, finding men who could love them despite their independence of spirit. Those men found that they could love a woman like me, a one who demanded of them more than fortune, but love in equality and a life that is my own as well as that of my husband’s. No, for me it was not to be for my pen required my independence. I suppose!
And there are the bells of Winchester. Are the bell ringers at work or do I imagine them, the bells, and do they ring for me only or some other?
My letters. Cassandra and I talked of them yesterday, the hopes, the wishes, the dreams, the disappointments all expressed therein. What should she do with them! What should I have her do with them! They are precious to her and to me but what of others who might read and dispose their contents with unsanctioned intent. What will others make of them? And what understandings or misunderstandings would they gain from them, those secret thoughts that are ours alone and perhaps should remain ours alone. I must think on it for the thought of their destruction pains me greatly.
That energy with which I awoke today, there was the song of birds, in someway I felt their bright cheer as strength. It was but an illusion. I had thought to go out for some air, but now that false energy has left me. My window is my world again, as it has been for many weeks now. Perhaps tomorrow my spirit shall manifest itself in more uplifting fashion.
I think again of Tom. He comes to me again today, clear in my thoughts, after these many years. I can envision it still, he and I in Steventon, when everything was before us, life, a future we saw together then but destined never to be, the excitement of mutual feeling and sentiment felt but not explored. Can it have been one and twenty years since his light went out of my life? I cannot fathom it.
I remain dissatisfied with my last book, “The Elliots”. I worry what it reveals about me and my own experience in life. It is a difficult thing to listen to those you trust, then to find that they are fallible, that your trust allows their mistakes to become yours. I cannot undo what is done but oh, I how I wish that I could.
I wait for Cassandra. She said that she would call for the physician. He came yesterday and said that I was as well as could be expected. Perhaps I could have done without that telling. I wish to feel better, to again engage with that life I have lost. Poor man, he no doubt does as well as one can. Perhaps a rector might suffice.
I see today with such bright clarity, my life, what it was, what it might have been. But where was that clarity of vision and purpose when it was needed most. But, no, regrets shall not consume me!
Tomorrow is Friday, the day of married love, yes it escaped me, but it is my day as it always has been. I feel it will lift me up, as love always does. Yes, tomorrow will be my day.
Oh Tom, would that it could have been.
Soon I must sleep and when I awake, again I shall find hope in what the new day brings.
I am so cold…
(Jane Austen died early the next day, Friday, 18 July 1817, and legend was born.)
D B Thomas
13 April 2022
*This is a work of fiction based on my interpretation of events in Jane Austen’s life.
Ricordi di Sanditon
Jane Austen iniziò il suo ultimo romanzo, Sanditon, nel 1817 scrivendone dodici capitoli prima di metterlo da parte. A causa della sua morte, avvenuta quello stesso anno, non lo finì mai.
Ricordi di Sanditon è un romanzo d’amore che racconta il resto della storia attraverso gli occhi dell’eroina di Jane Austen, Charlotte Heywood. La storia di Charlotte inizia prima di quella scritta da Jane Austen nel 1812, in una fattoria nel villaggio inglese di Willingden, dove vive rintanata dal resto del mondo, con il quale ha contatti solo attraverso i suoi libri e i suoi sogni finché, un giorno del 1818, un incidente su una strada molto accidentata la costringe a soggiornare lontano dal suo villaggio, a Sanditon appunto, una zona di pescatori che aspira a diventare una località balneare alla moda.
Ospitata da Tom Parker e da sua moglie, Charlotte si ritrova proprio nel cuore della società, circondata da persone che non conosce compreso il fratello di Tom, Sidney Parker. Ma Sidney è davvero quello che sembra, e Charlotte può fidarsi del proprio istinto e del proprio cuore in questo nuovo mondo?
L’incompiuto Sanditon della Austen è stato oggetto di una forte riscoperta negli ultimi anni e ha ispirato anche l’omonima serie tv su Prime Video
The english translation of the interview of DB Thomas by Dora Masi for the May 2024 edition of the Italian magazine “Il Novelliere”, about “Ricordi di Sanditon” (translates to “Memories of Sanditon” in english). The English language version of the book is “Sanditon on Reflection” which was published in Italian in December 2023 by Vintage Editore of Bari, Italy.
INTERVIEW WITH DB THOMAS
1. “Sandition” is the last work Jane Austen worked on before she died. “Memories of Sandition” is a tribute novel with which you wanted to give a sequel not only to a novel, but also to an unfinished TV series: such a legacy, seems a compelling task, and that could even hide pitfalls. Did you have any reservations before undertaking this project?
No, I did not have reservations when I began the project. I was simply focused on completing the unfinished TV series. But as I wrote, I considered that I should know what Jane Austen wrote in her unfinished “Sanditon”. So I bought and read it. I also read or re-read in some cases, “Pride and Prejudice”, “Emma” and Jane Austen’s other major novels as I tried to bring what I thought were Jane Austen’s emotions and feelings though her writing style into my “Memories of Sanditon”. But as I got deeper into the project, I begin to realize that while there were many variations of Jane Austen’s finished works, I was actually completing the only one she did not finish. In other words, I was writing for Jane Austen. I was putting to paper words for her. It was a terrifying thought that there might be many who would take issue with that; that I would have the arrogance to think that I could write for her. And I must say that I have heard that complaint from a few readers. But, ultimately I wrote the story for Jane Austen, as a celebration of her life, as a thank you for her unmatched contributions to literature and for her romantic heart which she revealed so brilliantly in her novels. And I wrote “Memories of Sanditon” to celebrate women everywhere.
2. The writing of J.A. it is characterized by ironic traits that manage to capture the nuances of a society often made of pleasantries. And despite the two centuries that separate us from her, she is still a much loved author. Which trait of Austen did you want to preserve in your novel?
Jane Austen was a very acute observer of human nature. She found a way to give women rights or power over men as she might have thought it. It generally was the other way around in her time. Women had almost no rights under the law; they might be forced to marry a man to create a financial connection for the family; if they owned property or had any wealth, it usually became their husband’s after marriage; sometimes property was entailed away from an estate if there were no male heirs and given to distant male relatives as to Mr Collins in Pride and Prejudice. Women with few exceptions had no control over their lives or future except through marriage, and in many cases where they came from little wealth or no wealth, they had only their beauty and/or their “connections” to recommend them. Jane Austen did not agree, I believe, as she wrote in arguably her most popular novel the words of Elizabeth Bennet in “Pride and Prejudice”. “I am determined that only the deepest love will induce me into matrimony.” Women would have rights; a choice for love and life in Jane Austen’s world and men would have to recognize and appreciate that women do have the right to make that choice as Mr Darcy learned he had to do.
3. What will we find about DB Thomas in the pages of the novel?
I am a romantic at heart. True love will find a way, against all odds, in Jane Austen’s world as it will in mine
4. You rediscovered J.A. after the “Sandition” series was aired. As an actor, do you believe that TV and cinema can be positive vehicles for bringing people closer to literature, especially that of the past?
As an actor, I may be biased a little by my profession. But I do believe that TV and cinema can be very positive influences for literature like that of Jane Austen if the production is well done. By that I mean that the production hews to (follows) the storyline and the characters reflect the spirit and meaning of the author. The 1995 Pride and Prejudice production is a very good example of that in my opinion. Also, TV and cinema have access to a much broader audience than do individual books and can more easily and efficiently bring the stories to larger audiences and thereby introduce new generations to authors of the past.
5. Both in the original novel and in the TV series the story revolves around the state of health, spa resorts and a lot of healthy irony. How can works of this kind, both from the past and from the present as well as yours, influence society today?
Well, the world has changed since Jane Austen wrote her novels. But in some ways, it has changed very little. Women are still undervalued in many places in this world, in Jane Austen’s time and now in the present. Jane Austen knew it and she found a way to show that women were at least the equals of men and sometimes their superiors. Tom Parker was a man with an obsession. He gave very little thought or respect to anything other than what he wanted to accomplish. But he did need a woman, Lady Denham and her wealth, but he was not above trying to manipulate her for his own ends. I took it a step further in my book by giving women the power to determine the outcome of the story rather than the men as I believe Jane Austen would have if she had been able to finish her “Sanditon”.
As far as influencing society goes, words in books and visual depictions of them on the screen are very powerful, and they can influence, teach and motivate. Better said perhaps, those words and screen versions can activate streams of thought and consciousness that can lead to change, we hope for good. I think Jane Austen’s words in her novels were addressing what she saw as needed changes, particularly where the rights of women were concerned. And perhaps she would have had something to say about hypochondriacs as well. I think those imagined illnesses were euphemisms for the wealthy who had the luxury of worrying about imagined concerns as was and is the case for many people insulated by their wealth from real world problems of poor health, poverty and abuse in Jane Austen’s time as it is today.
6. What new projects are you working on?
I am editing a new novel that I have just finished writing. And yes, it is a Jane Austen variation, (although in an update to the Italian translation of the interview, I consider my coming book to be a back story to Jane Austen’s novel rather than a variation).
