AUSTEN SEQUELS: PLAGIARIZING A PLAGIARIST

Continuing my addiction to Austen sequels, I have now discovered that some authors may not even have read an Austen original of Pride and Prejudice. When the film with Keira Knightley and Matthew MacFayden came out in 2005 it seemed a lovely romantic tale, since I had not read the original. I was eager to show it to someone I knew loved Austen and was annoyed that she talked and criticized it all through the film. She had been affronted that it didn't follow Austen and I realized that the person who made it into a film must have taken great liberties to make the story fit the time alloted as well as changing many scenarios of the plot.

Immediately I bought the Complete Jane Austen novels and realized the difference. Then I watched the BBC 2-disk version which quite honestly follows the story as Austen wrote it. I have now read two authors who directly quote from the short movie version. I'm sure that is not illegal but to true Austen fans it is insulting! Word for word one author lifted several lines as to what to call Lizzy when she asked Darcy not to call her 'my dear' because that is what her father called her mother when he was cross with her. Since it was not from the no longer copyrighted original, it is from a movie script and I would assume it is plagiarism. If someone is going to write a sequel of their own, it seems that it should only be taken from the original text. However, if one loves bedroom scenes, this book was certainly sexually titillating.

Having now read fourteen sequels with many more to go, they seem to multiply like rabbits, I am finding that there are good writers and bad writers. To me, the good sequel writers are those who use the original story, facts, dialogue and people and then fill in the blanks of the future after Austen stopped in a manner believable by the characters Austen had built. The rest of the writers seem to be trying to turn Austen into a cash cow. Like all else in my world, there is something to like in all of them if you can get by my plagiarism grievances.