Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
Ruth A. Symes is a freelance writer and historian for several genealogical, historical and literary magazines including Family Tree Magazine UK, Who Do You Think You Are Magazine and Discover Your Ancestors Periodical, Scottish Field, Scottish Heritage, and Leopard. Amongst her books are four family history titles: (1) Stories From Your Family Tree: Researching Ancestors Within Living Memory (The History Press, 2008) -this was republished and updated in 2016 as (1) Unearthing Family Tree Mysteries, Pen and Sword Book, 2016); (2) It Runs in the Family : Understanding More About Your Ancestors (The History Press, 2013); (3) Family First: Tracing Relationships in the Past (Pen and Sword Books, 2015) and (4) Tracing Your Ancestors Through Letters and Personal Writings (Pen and Sword, 2016). I also co-wrote The Governess: Anthology (The History Press, 1997); and The Northern Utopia: British Perceptions of Norway in the Nineteenth Century (Rodopi Press, 2003). I edited From Corncrake to Combine: Memoirs of a Cheshire Farmer (Tempus Publishing, 2008) and contributed the introduction to Alan Roby’s Miss Weeton: Governess and Traveller, (Wigan Archive, 2016).
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
Tracing Your Ancestors Through Letters and Personal Writings (Pen and Sword, 2016). I was inspired to write this by realising that many people in the past whom we might have presumed to be illiterate were actually scribbling away in the margins of books, annotating recipes, keeping diaries and travel journals, composing elliptical telegrams and cards and generally putting pen to paper in all sorts of ways in the Victorian period and early twentieth-century. I wanted to explore what these writings (both in their content and in their chosen format) could tell us about our ancestors and the times in which they lived.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
Always write like I’m painting an impressionist painting, a bit here a bit there, fill in the gaps and stand back to view the whole. Lots of editing and revision.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
A. S. Byatt
Kate Summerscale
Charlotte Bronte
Barbara Pym
Sebastian Faulks
Laurie Lee
D. H. Lawrence
George Eliot
Harper Lee
Virginia Woolf
What are you working on now?
Articles on the Armistice of 1918 for Family History magazines
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
My blog www.searchmyancestry.blogspot.co.uk
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Write on – even if it’s rubbish – and then revise, revise, revise.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
It’s never too late to be what you originally wanted to be!
What are you reading now?
Emily Bronte: A Chainless Soul by Katherine Frank
What’s next for you as a writer?
I’m in the process of writing a period drama for screen. It’s based on the life of an early nineteenth-century governess.
If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
High Windows by Philip Larkin
Miss Weeton: Governess and Traveller ed. Alan Roby
To Kill a Mocking Bird by Harper Lee
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