It is fashionable in the literary world to complain that no one edits books anymore, but happily this is not the case with either of my publishers, Virago in London and Spiegel & Grau in New York, both of whom have been painstaking in overseeing every step of the process of publishing Brave Hearted.
At Virago, my particular and heartfelt thanks go as always to my editor, Lennie Goodings, who commissioned this book six years ago now; also, to Susan de Soissons in publicity, to Linda Silverman who sourced the illustrations, to Ellen Rockell for the cover design, and most especially to Nithya Rae for meticulously overseeing all the many moving parts that go into producing a book. Daniel Balado was painstaking in his copyediting and has saved me from many errors. Also in the UK, my thanks to Richard Solly and my brother, Andrew Hickman.
In the US I would like to thank Sam Nicholson, Julie Grau, and everyone at Spiegel & Grau for believing so passionately in this book. I am grateful also to Professor Stephen Greenblatt for putting me in touch with Dr. Robert Lee and Dr. Matthew Spellberg, both of whom generously answered questions from a complete stranger. My particular and very warm thanks also to Dr. Andrea McComb Sanchez at the University of Arizona for her careful and sensitive reading of the manuscript. Any errors that remain are, of course, my own.
I began writing Brave Hearted in March 2020, at the very beginning of lockdown, and I finished the main draft of it in June 2021, as chance would have it within about a week of the lifting of the last of the British lockdown restrictions. My sole companion during almost all this time was my husband, Matthew Ruscombe-King, who not only listened patiently to every story but who lived with me through all the highs and lows of writing them down, and whose enthusiasm helped make this otherwise extremely demanding process also one of huge satisfaction.
Katie Hickman
November 2021