Jane Austen ReinventedJane Austen Reinvented

Literature Feature

cccccccc oor Jane - not only has she become a popular favourite too late to enjoy it, but her literary creations have been hijacked by authors all over the world. Prequels, sequels and recently, mashups with detectives, zombies, vampires and time travellers, have guaranteed Jane Austen the title of most popular author—even if you can’t recognize the end product sometimes…

There is a thriving market at the moment in adapting both her classic stories, and the characters who people them. So where did it all start, and which ones are worth reading?

There were only six novels written by Jane Austen before she died at the relatively young age of forty two. Two were published posthumously (Northanger Abbey and Persuasion), and there were three unfinished novels, possibly ones Jane did not ever intend to publish —Sanditon, The Watsons and Lady Susan.

Jane’s incomplete manuscript The Watsons was continued by her niece Catherine Hubback and published as The Younger Sister—A novel in 1850, and that started the whole process of the Jane Austen industry that we know today. Catherine’s own daughter Edith Charlotte Hubback, (writing as Mrs Francis Brown), continued the family tradition and introduced a new one—she took minor characters from Jane’s books and gave them their own stories. Margaret Dashwood, Or: Interference was published in 1929 and focused on the youngest Dashwood sister from Sense and Sensibility, while Mrs Brown picked a character from Mansfield Park to write about in 1930, in her novel Susan Price, Or: Resolution.

At last count, there were over 182 completions, sequels, adaptations and fictionalized stories based on Jane Austen’s original six stories. Well known authors such as Emma Tennant, Joan Aiken, Julia Barrett and Rachel Billington have all written sequels to Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility and Emma. In the last decade, author Francine Matthews, writing as Stephanie Barron, has also started a successful series of novels featuring Jane Austen as an amateur sleuth solving Victorian mysteries. American author Carrie Bebris, while not quite as well-received, has also started a series of mysteries with Mr & Mrs Darcy as the recurring characters. In her novels, the Darcys meet Jane Austen’s other fictional characters in circumstances which require their sleuthing skills.

Jane Austen has also been credited with the modern literary genre of Chicklit. Two adaptations of Jane Austen’s work and their immense popularity in the 1990s, led to many similar types of novel, and the subsequent rise of the genre as a separate form of literature.

Helen Fielding took the plot of Pride and Prejudice to a younger audience in 1996 with her novel Bridget Jones’s Diary, which was made into a very successful movie, as was Amy Heckerling’s Clueless, based on the plot of Emma. Fielding followed up with a version of Persuasion in her sequel Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason.

In 2007, Laurie Viera Rigler wrote Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict, about a modern LA girl who goes to bed with a broken heart and a hangover and wakes up in Regency England. You’re forgiven if you think Rigler’s first book sounds very similar to the recent BBC series Lost In Austen… Rigler followed her critically acclaimed romp in 2009 with the flip side of the story—Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict, in which the daughter of Regency gentleman wakes up in modern day LA.

American author Beth Patillo has written two bestselling novels that continue this chicklit/literary fan fiction category. Jane Austen Ruined My Life is the story of Emma Grant—determined to prove that Jane Austen ‘s romances are foolish, she heads to London to expose the author through a series of unpublished letters. In between tracking down the elusive letters and meeting with a secret Jane Austen Society, Emma meets a number of attractive men, and not unlike Elizabeth Bennet she must decide what is real and what is superficial in the search for love. Patillo followed up this success with Mr Darcy Broke My Heart, and once more we have an American in London. Claire Prescott is not an Austen fan—she doesn’t even see what all the fuss is about Mr Darcy. When Claire stumbles across the lost first draft of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, she also meets a dark handsome stranger who is Mr Darcy reincarnated. If you want something with a little bit more steam —there’s even a few authors who have chosen to go under the bed sheets, so to speak. Linda Berdoll herself explains her book Mr Darcy Takes a Wife: “..as befitting a maiden’s sensibilities, her (Jane Austen) novels all end with the wedding ceremony. We endeavour to right this wrong... Our lovers have wed. But the throbbing that we first encounter is not the cry of a passionate heart…”

Of course, serious Austen fans were outraged by Berdoll’s presumption in giving Elizabeth and Darcy a sex life, but fans loved the book, “Whoa, Darcy!” being one of the funniest responses by a reader. And having humanized the immortal couple, it was really only a short step to dehumanizing them shortly afterwards… Mash ups were originally used in web design, and referred to the practice of taking elements of two different web pages and creating a new product. The term is now loosely used for anything that is a fusion of two different sources, and in literature in particular, the recent practice started by Seth Grahame-Smith of taking a classic novel and bringing elements of the fantastic to it.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was published in 2009, and the response of authors everywhere was— ’why didn’t I think of that!’. Grahame-Smith stuck very faithfully to the original story, but made the Bennett sisters secret ninja-style zombie hunters. Dressed in the fashions of the day, impeccably coiffured, Jane and Elizabeth could still rip a blade from a reticule and dispatch a zombie without raising a glow. While very much a one-joke novel, the concept caught on in a big way. Amanda Grange, who had written a number of well-received Austen inspired novels such as Darcy’s Diary, and Mr Knightley’s Diary, embraced the dark side immediately and published Mr Darcy, Vampyre in 2009. Part Gothic potboiler and part Austen imitation, the reader picks the story up after their marriage, and

as the newlyweds abruptly depart for the Continent. Lizzie is increasingly puzzled as to why Darcy will not consummate their marriage, and not too keen on his many French relatives, which include the infamous Count Polidori. And continuing the Vampire theme, albeit in a lighter vein, Michael Thomas Ford published Jane Bites Back in 2010. In this light and amusing look at the ironies of life and death, Jane Austen is alive and well and a vampire. Forced to watch others profit from her creations without a single cent in royalties, Jane also struggles with a horrible secret. She has had a manuscript rejected 116 times over the last 200 years, and is a bit fed up with being told she can’t write... I doubt Austen herself would believe the impact her stories have had on popular fiction—she regarded Pride and Prejudice as “.. rather too light, and bright, and sparkling; it wants shade; it wants to be stretched out here and there with a long chapter of sense, if it could be had..” . Nevertheless she is arguably the most influential author in the history of fiction, and her stories, in whatever version, have become part of our popular culture. So whatever your personal taste in fiction, rest assured that there is a Jane Austen story that will suit you. Even if she didn’t actually write it herself. Sue Gammon References: Austen Leigh, James Edward A Memoir of Jane Austen by her Nephew Lond.: R.Bentley, 1870. Lane, Maggie Jane Austen’s World . Lond: Carlton Bks., 1996. http://www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/austseql.html.