University News Last updated 04 December 2012
A graduate of the University’s postgraduate creative writing programme (MA Writing) has shed new light on the history of Birmingham’s Cadbury family by telling the little-known story of the heiress to the chocolate empire who turned her back on the family fortune.
Fiona Joseph published Beatrice, a biography of Beatrice Cadbury, through her own publishing company, Foxwell Press, making use of the writing and business-related skills she was taught as part of her course.
After completing a degree in History and English, followed by a PGCE and then a Master’s in linguistics, Fiona initially worked as a university lecturer, before setting up her own business delivering English as a Foreign Language (EFL) resources. After taking a creative writing course at an adult education centre in 2004, Fiona decided she wanted to take her career further and chose to join the course at Birmingham City University in 2008.
She said: “I wasn’t one of those people who always wanted to be a writer, but I had started to write a few short stories and articles, and the trigger for me to study it more seriously was a rejection I got from a local short story magazine, who actually wrote a very nice reply saying they liked parts of it but felt it needed a bit more work. I realised that if I was to really write successfully I needed to put a lot more time in.
“I saw the course as an opportunity to experiment, find out what sort of writing I wanted to do and of course get better at it. A strong appeal was that I would be learning from tutors who were themselves published writers, so as well as the more technical aspects of the course we were also taught how to build a career. The course gave us the chance to share our work in a very safe environment, which taught me not to be precious about what I wrote, but to accept feedback and put yourself in the mind of the reader and what they want.
“There were opportunities for publication built into the course, through the anthology we produced each year, and I also started my own blog to talk about my experiences and my development as a writer. From that, I was contacted by a publisher in America which produced simplified versions of novels for non-native language learners, and commissioned me to do one of those. I also had a piece published in an anthology of essays on black and mixed-race women.”
The idea for the book on Beatrice came about when Fiona was chatting to a Dutch client of her EFL business from The Werkplaats School – an institution in the Netherlands well known for its free-spirited and progressive approach to education, which had been set up by a poor couple by the name of Kees and Betty Boeke, nee Cadbury. This prompted Fiona to investigate whether they had any links to the Birmingham chocolate-making dynasty. Further investigations proved that Betty was indeed Beatrice Cadbury, daughter of Richard Cadbury, who founded the factory in Bournville with his brother George.
Fiona said: “I was really intrigued – how did someone like that ended up living in poverty in the Netherlands and it turned out she had given away her shares to the workers, declaring her inherited wealth incompatible with her Quaker beliefs, while her husband was then deported for protesting against the First World War. While the traditional model is to get an agent and then a publisher, I decided that for this book at least I was going to set up my own imprint. It was a very steep learning curve but terrific fun and I had a great time doing it.
“I’m now on a bit of a mission to get Beatrice’s story known and am regularly giving talks at libraries and local societies, as well as promoting the book itself. What I would really like to do is turn her story into a radio documentary and even a TV drama, and I’m currently exploring different options for doing that.”
Fiona now enjoys a varied career, with her work split between her EFL business, the graded readers for the publisher in America and promoting her book, and planning talks.
She said: “I would like to do another biography – I’m just looking for the perfect subject – and I hope that in future my company can publish works by other writers. I do take my work seriously but I have a lot of fun with it as well.
“It’s difficult to make a living purely as a writer straight away, but I’ve realised there are other opportunities apart from book sales – for example by giving talks, not only are you paid a fee, but you also get the opportunity to hopefully sell copies of your books there. For any new writers, I would advise them to really get passionate about the publishing industry – read blogs, get on Twitter, subscribe to the trade press if you can – because it’s changing so fast. First we had ebooks and at the moment publishers are looking at Apps... no-one knows what the future will hold.”