THE TOO MANY PRIDE AND PREJUDICE SEQUELS

A few times I have written reviews of Elizabeth Aston's series of books on the extended Darcy family members as a sequel to the book PRIDE AND PREJUDICE by Jane Austen. After reading five that I found by Aston, Amazon kindly pointed me to the many more available. I read a book titled MR. DARCY PRESENTS HIS BRIDE by Helen Halstead. It, too, was a delightful book but it now pushed me into the confusion of feeling I was living in parallel worlds. The names and numbers of the Bennett grandchildren changed. Even the name Bennett was spelled two ways (Bennett& Bennet) Many of the characters came from Austen but many more were invented.

Next I read the Pemberley Chronicles and The Women of Pemberley by Rebecca Ann Collins, a pseudonym from one of the book's characters. Even this author gives different names for the Elizabeth and Darcy offspring. From the cover in the latter book, I learn that there are nine more books as sequels on the subject by that author. Additionally, I counted 25 more on Amazon.

One of the books I read had Lizzie with a miscarriage in her first pregnancy. Another had Lizzie having five girls, followed by two sons. A third had a daughter followed by a son but the boy had a different name in each of that author's books. I had hoped to read all the books and settle my head on the version I liked best. That is now unlikely as there is so much else I would like to read than a rehash of someone's fantasy when I can imagine a great one in my own head.

I see my two choices. I can content myself with knowing as little as what I know about what happens after Prince Charming and Snow White get married and move to another country to live happily ever after; or I can boggle my mind trying to keep a mental score card on the characters, their changing names and profiles, and exactly who is in the next generation of these families.

Quite interesting is the historical description, in the Pemberley Chronicles, of the Industrial Revolution in England. Unlike Tolkien's allegorical version of it in the Lord of the Rings, this accounting is much more readily understandable as the historical account it is meant to be. If there are any readers of this blog who may have read others and liked them, please comment here and let me know which they are! Meanwhile, I am in awe of the two hundred years during which so many have read and re-read Austen's novel. I am more in awe, though, of how many have caught the coat tail and capitalized on a novel that, by now, must be out of copyright.