Annie Elliot, author of 'Mr & Mrs Charles Dickens: Her Story' - Knowing when you need to get words written, mining your own past, and was Charles Dickens a narcissist?
Writer's Routine
Dan Simpson
4.9 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 16 April 2026
⏱️ 60 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Annie Elliot has always been around words. She worked in local government, taught communication, as a newspaper reporter, which taught her the importance of being able to get the words down on time. She's written short-stories and flash-fiction which have been successful in competitions, and was longlisted for Mxslexia Magazine's Novel Award.
Her new novel is 'Mr & Mrs Charles Dickens: Her Story'. It's a self-portrait of Catherine, Charles Dickens' wife, and the marriage that nearly destroyed her. After 22 years of marriage, she was banished from the home and their nine children, with her reputation destroyed, when her husband fell in love with an 18 year old actress. On her deathbed, Kate asked her daughter to give Charles' letters to the British Museum, 'so the world may know he loved me once'. Annie's novel fulfills her dying wish, and restores Kate to history as more than a famous author's discarded wife.
We talk about Annie's career, and what that taught her about communication and precision. You can hear why she went back to school, and what Annie learned from a masters degree. We discuss her thorough research, why she is in the best place to write, and how 'Hamnet' inspired her story.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This week's episode of Writers Routine is sponsored by the Quick Book Reviews podcast. |
| 0:05.0 | If this show takes you behind the scenes of writing books, the Quick Book Reviews podcast takes you into what makes them brilliant. |
| 0:13.0 | It's all about the authors too. You can join Philippa, who for the last six years has been chatting to some of the biggest authors around and discovering |
| 0:22.0 | their newest work. If you're a reader looking for new book recommendations and getting to know |
| 0:27.1 | your favourite writers, this is the perfect show for you with in-depth chats and spoiler-free book |
| 0:33.3 | reviews in perfect bite-sized chunks to fit easily into your day. |
| 0:38.6 | Philippa gets into all the fun questions too, finding out what authors like to eat, where |
| 0:43.7 | they want to go on holiday, and the gossip about bits of their life that you won't find |
| 0:48.7 | anywhere else. All that with some very speedy book reviews, getting right to the heart of all the newest stuff out there and the best ones for you to read the quick book reviews podcast is a lighthearted look at authors and what you might love about their new book you can get two episodes a week, wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 1:11.9 | Just search for the Quick Book Reviews podcast. |
| 1:23.3 | Hello and welcome along to a brand new episode of writers' routine. |
| 1:27.2 | This week, chatting to Annie Elliott, |
| 1:29.8 | whose new novel takes a look inside the home of one of the most famous literary giants ever. |
| 1:36.4 | Mr. and Mrs. Charles Dickens, her story is a self-portrait of Kate, Charles's wife, and the marriage that nearly destroyed her. We talk about |
| 1:45.9 | why the spark came from Maggie O'Farrell's Hamnit. Also, Annie started late. Does she have any |
| 1:53.2 | regrets on leaving it a while before getting the words down? I don't think I could have done |
| 1:58.0 | this book justice if I hadn't lived the life that I've lived. |
| 2:02.8 | And I think that everything that's happened to me over my life has fed into an understanding of what happens to Mrs. Dickens and the challenges that she faced. And I can relate to many of the |
| 2:20.2 | challenges that she faced, not the least that she found out that her husband, you know, was having |
| 2:27.3 | an affair. So these are all things that I have experienced and I needed to experience to be able to |
| 2:33.9 | write about it with |
| 2:34.9 | authenticity. And we run through her thorough research, which led to tales where the fact |
... |
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