Today is a holiday for the girlies who love reading rom-coms: Emily Henry’s new book, Great Big Beautiful Life, is out now! The beloved author’s latest masterpiece follows Alice Scott and Hayden Anderson, two writers competing to write the biography of reclusive heiress Margaret Ives. Margaret offers them both tidbits about her life and will ultimately decide which version of her life story should be published. In order to craft a complex character like Margaret, Emily drew inspiration from several real-life stories to bring depth to her and her family history.
One of those real-life stories is documented in the popular Taylor Swift track, “The Last Great American Dynasty.” (The song is about Rebekah Harness, and if you didn’t already know that, you’re definitely a fake Swiftie.) So, basically, listening to Taylor might just inspire a brilliant novel idea. Noted. In addition to the subject of that folklore song, Emily researched other wealthy and layered historical figures like Princess Diana and the Kennedy family to help inform the character of Margaret. Needless to say, I’ll probably finish this book in one to two days. Here’s how Taylor Swift, Princess Diana, and the Kennedys all helped inspire Emily Henry’s Great Big Beautiful Life.
It’s common Swiftie knowledge that “The Last Great American Dynasty” song tells the story of Rebekah Harkness, a Rhode Island socialite and philanthropist who lost her husband and inherited the mansion, Holiday House — a mansion that now belongs to Taylor. “I love that song, and love the story behind it,” Emily told E! News about finding inspo in the lyrics. “Every once in a while I find myself back on the Wikipedia page, just reading through. I just find those kinds of larger-than-life families really, really intriguing.”
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The author also revealed that Princess Diana’s story helped shape the character of Margaret. “Her story was so unnecessarily tragic and is something that I think still looms so large for all of us,” she explained. The Kennedy family and their history with aviation accidents was another source of inspiration for Emily as she was writing Great Big Beautiful Life. She found herself particularly interested in “this sense of a family curse” and how tragedies can affect families over many generations.
“I think the things that really fascinate us about these families in pop culture are usually just sort of larger-than-life reflections of our own personal histories,” Emily shared about Rebekah, Princess Diana, and the Kennedys. She explained that we all know “there is history that makes us and shapes us” that we weren’t involved in at all.
Reflecting on the “starting point” for Margaret, Emily described her vision as “the idea of this woman who is part of this larger-than-life history that the average American would maybe be somewhat familiar with but they would have had this scandalous perception of it.” Yup, it’s giving Rebekah and the girlies obsessing over her life story.
It’s safe to say Swifties will be purchasing their copies of Great Big Beautiful Life ASAP.
