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In a 2024 interview with Scroll.in, Bee Rowlatt described retracing Mary Wollstonecraft’s European journey with her 11-month-old baby as a way to test how motherhood affects creative life. Her account is a personal one, drawn from one trip and two nonfiction books that began in very different ways. It is not a general finding about mothers who write, and the interview does not claim to be one.
What Rowlatt said about motherhood and creative life
Asked why she made the Wollstonecraft journey, Rowlatt named two motivations. The first was to make Wollstonecraft’s life and work accessible by following her route. The second was to have an adventure of her own, partly by stepping away from some everyday responsibilities, and to find out what motherhood did to her working life. In her words, the aim was “testing the boundaries of motherhood and the impact it has on a creative life.”
That framing matters. Rowlatt was explaining her own reasons for a single project, not reporting results from a study of writers or parents. The interview gives her experience and stated intent; it contains no survey, measurement or named statistic on motherhood and creativity, so readers should treat the conclusions as hers to weigh.
Two nonfiction books, two different origins
The interview compares Talking About Jane Austen in Baghdad and In Search of Mary along three lines: how each began, what form it takes, and what it is about. The table below uses only what Rowlatt described in the interview. Where it did not address a point, the cell says so.
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| Feature | Talking About Jane Austen in Baghdad | In Search of Mary |
|---|---|---|
| Authors | Bee Rowlatt and May Witwit | Bee Rowlatt |
| Origin | Correspondence that began as a practical way to help Witwit leave Iraq after other attempts had failed | A project Rowlatt knew from the outset would become a book, though she had not yet worked out how it would function |
| Form | An epistolary exchange of emails that also works as reportage | What Rowlatt calls an “immersive biographical experiment,” which she also describes as a travelogue and memoir |
| Central subject | Witwit’s experience of warfare, occupation and displacement, including her move to becoming a refugee | Wollstonecraft’s life and Rowlatt’s retracing of her European journey with a baby |
| Title origin | Proposed by the publishers; Rowlatt recalls accepting it when funding Witwit’s escape was the priority | Not stated in the interview |
| Shelving | Not stated in the interview | Rowlatt says she has seen it placed in different bookshop sections |
Talking About Jane Austen in Baghdad: from letters to reportage
Where the book started
The book did not start as a book. Rowlatt’s correspondence with her friend May Witwit began as a practical effort to help Witwit leave Iraq, after other routes had not worked. The emails kept the record of that effort, and Rowlatt says they retain private and difficult material that was part of the women’s shared story. That is why she describes the result as reportage as well as an exchange of letters: Witwit’s account of life under warfare and occupation, and of her transition to being a refugee, is the substance of the text.
Why the title points somewhere else
The title foregrounds Jane Austen, and Rowlatt acknowledges that it set up expectations. Publishers suggested it as a marketable title, and she accepted it when securing Witwit’s escape was the priority. She notes that some readers came to it expecting far more Austen than the book contains. Readers looking for a literary study of Austen will find something different; the Austen reference is a framing device rather than the book’s subject.
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In Search of Mary: a book that resisted its category
Retracing a journey with a baby
Wollstonecraft travelled with a baby in 1795, and Rowlatt followed that route with her own child. She describes the trip as combining research and writing with the practical delays and comic disorder that come with travelling with an 11-month-old. The book keeps that texture: it is as much about the logistics and detours of the journey as about the archive.
Why publishers struggled to place it
Rowlatt argues that writers often have a strained relationship with genre, and that books are expected to “fit” a market category. In her view, In Search of Mary was harder to place because publishers were unsure what it was. She has seen it shelved in different sections, which fits a book that moves between biography, travel writing and memoir rather than sitting neatly in one.
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Wollstonecraft’s place in history
Rowlatt names two central motivations for the book: making Wollstonecraft’s life accessible, and drawing attention to what she sees as Wollstonecraft’s erasure from history. The retracing of the journey serves both aims. It turns a historical life into a route a reader can follow, and it places a woman who wrote about her travels back on the road where she made them.
Travelling with an 11-month-old
Rowlatt describes her companion as a lively toddler who could be difficult and funny, and who was also a source of beauty on the journey. Her account of that trip touches on several points that are worth reading as her observations rather than rules:
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- Interactions changed. Rowlatt says having the child with her altered how people she met related to her.
- Hospitality. She reflects on the ways people opened their homes and hearts to the two of them.
- Small moments. She says bringing her baby made fleeting childhood moments visible and precious, and that she unexpectedly captured some of them in the book.
- Disruption. Delays and disorder were part of the work, not a separate problem to solve before the writing could begin.
These are her recollections of one journey. They describe a single parent and child travelling in a specific historical retracing, and they should not be taken as a general account of what travelling with a baby is like.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.From nonfiction to fiction and back
The interview also covers Rowlatt’s move into fiction. She describes finding fiction difficult, and her relief at returning to nonfiction is captured in one line: “The writing is like slipping back into your favourite boots.” It is a personal comparison about her own working experience, and it is the clearest indication in the interview of how the two forms feel different to her.
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The conversation’s closing section turns to One Woman Crime Wave, which Rowlatt described at the time as her next book. It is told from the point of view of a teenage girl who cannot stop stealing. The interview was recorded in 2024, and this article does not establish whether the novel has since been published or is currently in print. Before buying, check the publisher’s listing and a current retailer or library catalogue.
Which book to read first
- If you want the motherhood question in context, start with In Search of Mary. It is where Rowlatt tests her own working life against travel with a baby.
- If you want to see how a book can come out of a private rescue effort, read Talking About Jane Austen in Baghdad, and read it as reportage rather than as Austen criticism.
- If you want the interview’s wider arc, the Scroll.in conversation (published 9 March 2024, with Vighnesh Hampapura and Shree Thaarshini Sriraman at the Jaipur Literature Festival) covers both books alongside Rowlatt’s move toward fiction.
Rowlatt is introduced by Scroll as a writer and journalist whose work has appeared in The Independent, The Telegraph, The Guardian and BBC Online. That is the publication’s own description from 2024, not an independently verified current biography.
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