Lee Welch is a fantasy/historical romance writer based in Wellington. Like most Wellingtonians, she works for the government, but has a role inline with her interests: writing and editing. Mr Collins in Love is her first foray into Austen fiction, and she’s clearly done a great job; it was ranked as one of the top ten romance novels of 2025 by the New York Times. Lee has graciously agreed to answer my burning questions about her version of Mr Collins. [At the end there’s a chance for you to win a copy!]
Mr Collins, let’s be frank, sucks. What inspired you to reinterpret him? What influenced your interpretation of him? Why decide to give him love?
He doesn’t REALLY suck! Jane Austen simply misunderstood her own character. Hee hee, it still gives me a mischievous thrill to say that!
But seriously, I too was once a Mr Collins hater like every sensible person. Then, one evening I was idly rewatching the 2005 Joe Wright film with Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Bennet. Tom Hollander plays Mr Collins, and, I feel, brings a certain earnest sympathy to the role, which was lacking, for me at least, in David Bamber’s portrayal of the character in the 1995 BBC TV series.
There’s a scene in the 2005 film that inspired me. It lasts a second or two. We see Mr Collins at Mr Bingley’s ball. He’s looking for Lizzie and can’t find her, and there’s this brief moment where he looks so lost and confused. I felt for the man, so obviously out of place in one of the greatest love stories ever told.
I thought; why shouldn’t he have a happy ending too? Why shouldn’t he be the hero for once? Because everyone deserves love, right? And because I write m/m romance (i.e. romance between men), it was obvious to me that his happy ending wouldn’t be with Charlotte Lucas, but with someone else entirely. And it all went from there!
How did you decide which details from the novel to include/recontextualise? Do you think Austen would have enjoyed this reinterpretation of her work and what kind of enjoyment do you imagine she might have received from it?
My first act was to jot down all the information Austen gives us about Mr Collins in the book, including some of the things he says. Then I started playing with what we know about him and trying to reinterpret those things from a sympathetic point of view. Why, for example, did he make no “useful acquaintance” at university? What would it have been like to have been brought up “under the guidance of an illiterate and miserly father”? I tried to use all the details that were pertinent to Mr Collins, while including none that didn’t centre him. That, for example, is why Lizzie doesn’t appear on the page in my book, because frankly, she’s not that important to him or his story, whereas Charlotte must appear on the page because he marries her. She’s important to him because her presence in his house will affect the man he loves.
The hardest detail for me to recontextualise was a line in Mr Collins’ letter to Mr Bennet after Lydia has run off with Wickham. Mr Collins writes “The death of your daughter would have been a blessing in comparison to this.” That’s quite a thing to say and it took me a while to come up with a way to interpret that in a charitable light! I think I managed it but of course readers will have to judge for themselves.
I’m afraid if the real Jane Austen read my story she’d be horrified and offended. Mr Collins, in love with another man! That love returned! She was a woman of her time, and a Christian, and respectable people didn’t approve of such things back then.
If she’d been born in our times, I expect she wouldn’t have minded about Mr Collins being gay, but she might have felt I’d been rather kind to her odious little clergyman.
Let’s talk about Jem, the “love interest”. Jem is a difficult character for the reader to understand. Does this reflect Mr Collins own struggles? Was it important to you that Jem belonged to a different social class? It seems like Jem understands who he is, and who Mr Collins is, in a way Mr Collins doesn’t – how/why?
Is Jem difficult to understand? Of course it WAS intentional for Mr Collins to sometimes be confused by Jem and his actions. To my mind, Jem is very clear in his motivations and intentions: he’s had a hard life. His father died. His brother was a bully. People thought him ugly and said so. One person, and one person alone, showed him friendship and loyalty – young Master Willie, our Mr Collins. It’s telling that when he’s in trouble, Jem goes to Mr Collins for help. They trusted each other once and in the book they learn to trust one another again.
I did contemplate having a love interest for Mr Collins who was of the same social class, but the fact that Austen tells us he made no acquaintance at university kept prodding me. Since he found it hard to make friends, I felt I needed someone who would have been around him for long enough to realise that he’s a kind and decent person. So, it made sense that Jem would be working class because that way he’d be at young Master Willie’s house doing his job; they would have been thrown together.
I agree that Jem understands who he is. He’s lived, he’s been out in the world, and has clear ideas about right and wrong. He’s a gentle man who’s found the world to be horribly harsh. He wants to escape the cruelty and violence, to be treated decently, and valued as a friend…or maybe something more.
Mr Collins understands himself quite well, actually. He knows his preferences and limitations, and is justifiably proud of the way he navigates the world. The problem for him is other people! They don’t accept his preferences and limitations, so he must keep things secret and pretend all the time. It’s exhausting, and he’s constantly terrified of making a mistake. Because other people’s habits and reactions are so odd (to him) he doubts himself a lot of the time. Also, he finds the ‘helpful advice’ people give him is generally no help at all.
I meant that Jem seems to be aware of their, presumably shared, sexual identity. Perhaps even outside of their relationship.
As a working-class boy with older brothers and other boys about, Jem would have learned about various sexual acts much earlier than friendless young Master Willie. It’s from Jem that the young Mr Collins learned that secret sexual activity was possible between men. Jem’s been in the navy, too. He’d have been aware of a fair bit of sex, though lots of men will have sex with other men if there aren’t any women around – it doesn’t mean those men are “gay” (not that they’d have used that word in Mr Collins’ time!) and Jem wouldn’t have assumed so. He knows there are other men who aren’t interested in women, but I don’t think he thinks in terms of “identity”; he just knows what he likes, and he isn’t interested in finding anyone else.
In any case, the book is told solely from the point of view of Mr Collins, and he has never really discussed sexuality with Jem, beyond them both setting a couple of simple limits when they were young. Mr Collins never questions Jem’s preferences; he simply accepts them, as Jem does his. I think the lack of interrogation is something they both very much appreciate; how wonderful to find someone who simply accepts you as you are!
As someone who is both queer and neurodivergent, it was refreshing to see some of my own identity on the page in relation to Austen. Why or how was this book important to you?
I see no reason why we shouldn’t queer Austen or any of the classics and thus get the books we hoped for growing up.
The same goes for a neurodivergent character – why shouldn’t he get to be the hero?
It felt very important to write a book that reassesses a character who’s been ridiculed and loathed for over a century. I’m often horrified at how judgemental people can be, and how quick they are to interpret the actions of others in the worst possible light. But if you see things from the point of view of that person, you may see that they’re doing their best in a difficult situation, and that they are, in fact, a person of considerable kindness and bravery.
The fans will definitely want more. What other Austen characters would you be keen to reinterpret? Who else could be quietly queer? What’s next for you?
Ha ha, I’m afraid I’m going to disappoint readers who are hoping for a queer Marianne Dashwood or whoever. I’ve written four books and while they’re all m/m romance, that’s the only similarity. I tend to gravitate to something completely different each time.
Thanks for your time, Lee. I really enjoyed this novella and recommend interested readers purchase it from Amazon or most other online bookstores (print only from Amazon, audiobook also available). Looking forward to future Austen works from you (fingers crossed) and hopefully seeing your face at Austen meetings.
If readers would like to go into the draw to win a free ebook of Mr Collins in Love, please email Lee at leewelchwriter@gmail.com before the end of Feb with the subject “JASANZ entry for Mr Collins ebook”.
For more info on Mr Collins in Love and Lee’s other books please visit https://leewelchwriter.com/