Still She Wished for Company by Margaret Irwin

It has many of the elements of a fine historical novel. If you set aside the supernatural elements, you can see in Still She Wished how Margaret Irwin wrote her acclaimed books.

Margart Irwin by Bassano, half-plate glass negative, 27 July 1939. But Margaret Irwin also wrote a number of respected ghost stories and These Mortals about a wizard and his daughter. She usually focused on real people and events and was admired for her re-creations. Her best-known work is her historical trilogy about Elizabeth I: Young Bess, Elizabeth, Captive Princess and Elizabeth and the Prince of Spain. This is Margaret Irwin’s first novel and, until I was looking for a not-too-scary supernatural story, I didn’t know that she wrote anything like this. Perhaps Still She Wished was suggested in part by the increased interest in spiritualism after the First World War, by a desire for communication with the dead. The theory seems to be that the barriers of time can be crossed, if there is sufficient will. He too has a psychic ability, and he and Jan are attracted to each other. These two are aware of each other and occasionally appear in each other’s time, without understanding how or why, and the link between them is encouraged by Juliana’s dissolute elder brother, Lucian. There is independent Jan, perhaps in her mid-20s and living in 1920s London and innocent Juliana, in her late teens and living with her family in their great house in the 18 th century. Still She Wished for Company is a timeslip story – a true one, the author suggests – about a psychic connection between two women living a hundred years apart.

Still She Wished for Company by Margaret Irwin