The Tragic Story Behind Bridgerton Graphic Novel
In What Happens in London, Julia Quinn's seventh Bridgerton novel, Hyacinth Bridgerton visits the elderly Lady Danbury once a week to read to her.
The book she brings is an absurd pastiche of Gothic fiction, complete with ridiculously tragic ends for the protagonist's entire family, a moody love interest, and a variety of near-death episodes.
Quinn wrote the book-within-a-book Miss Butterworth and the Mad Baron to be as silly and over-the-top as possible, and she had so much fun with the story that it went on to be referenced within five more of her novels.
Quinn's readers wanted to be able to read Miss Butterworth and the Mad Baron, but since it's supposed to be outrageous and terrible, Quinn didn't feel that she could actually release the story in novel form. In an interview with Shondaland, she said:
It's really fun to write paragraphs of really bad writing, but trust me when I tell you that writing a whole book of this would not be a pleasurable writing or reading experience. But they kept asking me. Now, my sister was a cartoonist and an illustrator, and one day we were just talking, and I mentioned that Miss Butterworth and the Mad Baron would make a good graphic novel.
The sisters embarked on their first-ever collaboration, with Julia Quinn doing most of the writing and her sister Violet Charles doing the illustrations. However, Quinn says that it was a true collaboration. Charles would break the story down into storyboard, and then the two sisters would review and change things until they were both happy.
The sisters decided that their project would be dedicated to their father, Stephen Lewis Cotler. He was very excited about his daughters collaborating on a book, and frequently shared his enthusiasm and support.
But just before Miss Butterworth and the Mad Baron was finished, Violet Charles and Stephen Lewis Cotler were both killed by a drunk driver. Charles' husband and dog also died in the accident. Cotler's wife (the stepmother of Quinn and Charles) suffered a head injury that now prevents her from living independently.
What's even more heartbreaking is that Charles never saw her first graphic novel published. Her sister told Shondaland:
She was only 37 and was somebody who had taken a little while to kind of find her place in life. And this was going to be something real… it was something really exciting for her. She had done web comics, [but had never] been published by a major international publishing house. We were hoping to do [another book] too. We had some ideas for planning one out.
The death of her sister, father, and brother-in-law just before the publication of Miss Butterworth was terribly tragic for Quinn. However, she's grateful to have had some time working with her sister on shared passion project.
"[This book] is a thing of joy to talk about because [Violet] was so, so funny, and it's all her… I feel like my last gift to her is to bring this out into the world with as much excitement and fanfare that I can. I'm not honoring her in any way if I hide and say that this is too sad to talk about."
Miss Butterworth and the Mad Baron was released in June 2021, and is available wherever books are sold.