"Engaging Mr. Darcy" by Rachel John

Jane Austen might be surprised, but more than two centuries after her death, she’s responsible for a large and growing publishing empire.

Not only do her own novels remain popular, they have spawned countless offshoots: contemporary retellings, science fiction Austen, mystery Austen, television Austen, movie Austen, non-fiction studies Austen, and even Zombie Austen. If nothing else, this publishing and popular media outpouring is a tribute to how much her books are still loved and admired.

Engaging Mr. Darcy by Rachel John falls into the “contemporary retelling” category. It’s Pride and Prejudice, updated as a contemporary romance. It includes all the familiar characters and the familiar story line, even if they’re in unfamiliar roles. 

Elsie Bennet lives and works with her sister Jane in a small California town. They’re operating an increasingly successful mail-order T-shirt business out of their home; Elsie also works part-time at a pizza parlor famous for its bad food. They have three other sisters who live with their parents. One sister, Lydia, is a flighty spendthrift who’s convinced she’ll make it big in movies.

Rachel John

Into the pizza parlor one night wanders Will (short for Fitzwilliam) Darcy, who is renting a home in town for a few months with his best friend Charlie Bingley. Will and Elsie clash immediately over a pizza order, and the relationship stays frosty after Charlie begins to date Jane. Charlie’s something of a butterfly – dating girls for a short time and then moving on. Charlie’s sister Caroline is intent on landing Will, but Will remains steadfastly uninterested. He does find himself becoming interested in Elsie, but the two are oil and water. 

Elsie’s mother hopes that Elsie will settle down with that nice Will Collins, who’s just won the lottery and become filthy rich. Will’s finances are being managed by Will’s aunt, Catherine DuBourg, a financial planner. Catapulting into this sea of romantic stories in Jeff Wickham, who seems intent on pursuing Elsie and Lydia simultaneously and aggravating Will Darcy as much as possible. 

John has written several romance novels, including two others derived from Jane Austen books, including Emma the Matchmaker and Persuading the Captain. Other novels are grouped in the “Matched by Mistake” and “A Change in Plans” series. She’s also written several children’s stories.

Engaging Mr. Darcy ends predictably, just like the original story it’s based on. But it is a fun romp through Jane Austen retold as (somewhat) California cool. 

“A Jane Austen Encounter” by Donna Fletcher Crow

If you like Jane Austen, and if you like a mystery, then I have a book for you: A Jane Austen Encounter by Donna Fletcher Crow.

Crow is the author of some 50 books, mostly novels about British history. In addition to “The Monastery Murders” series, she has three novels in the Lord Danvers series, A Most Inconvenient Death, Grave Matters, and To Dust You Shall Return. The Elizabeth & Richard series, of which A Jane Austen Encounter is the fourth, features a husband-and-wife team who teach university English. Crow is an American (she lives in Idaho), but she knows her English literature. And she’s a life member of The Jane Austen Society. 

And her knowledge of Jane Austen’s life and books, both published and the unpublished partial manuscripts, saturates this mystery tale. 

Richard and Elizabeth Spenser are on something of a second honeymoon. Richard has taken a sabbatical from his university teaching; Elizabeth is officially a professor emeritus, which means partially retired and teaching only occasional classes. They have come to Bath in England to begin a tour of Jane Austen country and books, led by a rather dominating and loud British professor named Muriel Greystoke. In addition to the Spensers, the group is comprised of several people associated with Muriel – assistants, drivers, graduate students, her publisher, and even a local newspaper reporter.

Donna Fletcher Crow

Richard is trying to determine an appropriate topic for sabbatical research: Elizabeth is simply enjoying the trip. He helps one assistant find what looks to be a letter written by a relative of Austen’s, and then an assistant is attacked and the letter stolen. The Spensers find themselves being followed by a man who claims to be a reporter but clearly isn’t. Elizabeth’s purse is stolen. And then Muriel slips in a fall and is later found dead under a collapsed weighty bookcase. It looks like an accident, but it might be murder.

The mystery develops side by side with rather detailed descriptions of the towns, cities, houses, and fields associated with Jane Austen and her family, from Bath to Winchester and Canterbury. And like any academics who know their stuff, Richard and Elizabeth talk extensively about the Austen books and manuscripts, envisioning places where various characters meet and interact. And, somehow, they still find time to solve the mystery.

It’s all great fun, and Jane Austen fans should find it to be a treat. If you’re not a fan, you will learn a lot about Emma, Persuasion, the other books, the various manuscripts, and the stories of Jane, her parents, and her brothers and sisters.

“Praying with Jane” (Austen) by Rachel Dodge

With all of the movies, remakes, novelizations, satires, and articles, the one thing you rarely if ever read about Jane Austen is her devout religious faith. 

Her father was an Anglican clergyman. The practice of the family’s faith was daily, including family morning and evening prayers, prayers before and after meals, private prayers, prayer before bedtime, and two lengthy worship services on Sunday. The family read devotional books together. 

In a short work, author Rachel Dodge helps to broaden the understanding of Austen’s faith. Praying with Jane is a devotional work with 31 daily entries that use three beautiful prayers written by Austen herself. Dodge structures each entry with a portion of the prayer, a brief discussion from Austen’s biography, letters, or works, and an invitation to pray, including a short prayer.

Rachel Dodge

“Reading Jane’s prayers,” she writes in the introduction, “is a bit like looking into her heart. In them, we get to know another side of Jane’s personality—a more serious and reverent side. They reveal a genuine, practical faith in Jesus Christ.”

Dodge is an author, speaker, workshop leader, college lecturer, and a writer for the Jane Austen World blog. In addition to Praying with Jane, featured during the month of October at Literary Life, she’s currently working on a devotional based on Anne of Green Gables.

You can likely read Pride and Prejudice or Sense and Sensibility and enjoy the works without knowing the details of the author’s life, including her religious faith. But to read a short, simple work like Praying with Jane is to have one’s eyes opened about underpinned the works and life of one of English literature’s most beloved authors.

Related:

Death Comes to Pemberley by P.D. James.

Second Impressions by Pepper Basham.

"Second Impressions" by Pepper Basham

Nora Simeon is 26 and still recovering from the accidental death of her husband. Her mother is almost a stereotype of a matchmaker, and she keeps trying to set Nora up with prospective husbands. For now, Nora is content with teaching and her passion for Jane Austen novels.

Ethan Keller works in the hotel business. His boss is his uncle, who keeps throwing attractive women in Ethan’s direction in the hopes he gets married. Ethan, however, isn’t impressed. He’s not looking for a Barbie doll-type wife, but someone who is real.

Nora and Ethan find themselves thrown together – almost literally – is a small hotel in Bath, England. Nora has been given a trip to the Jane Austen Festival as a birthday present, and Ethan’s company is buying the hotel. They find themselves forced to share a room because of overbooking – or perhaps because of plan hatched by Nora’s mother and Ethan’s uncle. 

Nora hears Ethan rudely berating a hotel clerk, and Ethan has to help a jetlagged Nora, throwing up and exhausted after her journey to Bath. Despite a bad (and justified) first impression, Nora begins to find herself attracted to Ethan, and Ethan is certainly attracted to Nora. 

It’s Bath, it’s Jane Austen, and it’s elements of Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion.

Pepper Basham

Second Impressions, a novella by Pepper Basham, is the story or Nora and Ethan, two people who find themselves unexpectedly falling in love, discovering the works of a beloved novelist, and overcoming both their first impressions of each other and attempts to sink their relationship. 

Basham is the author of numerous historical and contemporary romance novels, novellas, and stories. A Twist of Faith is the first in her Mitchell Crossroads series; the second is Charming the Troublemaker. Second Impressions is one of two novellas by Basham involving the work of Jane Austen, the second being Jane by the Book. Basham and her family live in Asheville, North Carolina. 

Second Impressions is a fun love story, an easy read, and something of a guide to Bath and Jane Austen mania.

Related:

My review of A Twist of Faith by Pepper Basham.

Top photograph: Bath Abbey, by Diliff via Wikimedia Commons.

“Death Comes to Pemberley” by P.D. James

P.D. James (1920-2014) remains one of the best known and best-read British mystery writers. Beginning in 1962, she wrote 14 Inspector Adam Dalgliesh mysteries, two about private investigator Cordelia Gray, and three other novels. Her final novel before her death was Death Comes to Pemberley, which used the characters and setting of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice for a murder mystery.

It is several years after Elizabeth Bennett marries Fitzwilliam Darcy. They have two sons, and Elizabeth has her hands full running the house of the Pemberley estate, including planning for the annual ball. Unexpectedly, a horse-drawn carriage comes careening up the drive. Inside is Lydia Wickham, Elizabeth’s sister and the wife of George Wickham, a former army officer forced to marry Lydia is something of a shotgun marriage. The hysterical Lydia says George and Captain Denny, had bolted into the Pemberley woods, and then shots were heard.

Darcy and two of his guests investigate, and come upon a drunk Wickham leaning over the body of his friend. Wickham is eventually arrested and charged with murder.

Death Comes to Pemberley, published in 2011, was made into a British television mini-series in 2013. I saw the series before reading the book, and the movie definitely follows the written story closely.

The novel is in the style of Austen, and it’s rather fun to see one approach to what has happened to the characters of Pride and Prejudice. But this last work by James is something of a departure from James’s usual police procedural novels (some of the best written police procedural novels available). And there is a considerable amount of narrative advancement or backfilling that happens in the epilogue that could have been woven into the main story.

P.D. James

The main narrative culminates in a trial with a surprise conclusion and unexpected developments flowing from the trial.

I enjoyed the novel, but this is one of those reverse situations where the television series was better. And you can watch all three episodes on YouTube.

Top photograph: Chatsworth House in Derbyshire, the setting for the television series Death Comes to Pemberley.