Celebrating Jane Austen's Birthday

It is 250 years since the birth of Jane Austen - the perfect time to revisit the six classic novels that made her reputation. But while rereading Austen may be a bridge to far for many readers, there are plenty of books to be enjoyed that give a taste of Austen in a more modern style.

It’s easy to imagine taking a favourite Austen heroine or setting and wondering what might happen next. There have been for instance at least two novels exploring the life of Pride and Prejudice’s Charlotte Lucas. If you recall, Charlotte is Elizabeth Bennett’s good friend, a girl from a not so well-to-do family with few marriage prospects. In the original book, Charlotte accepts the hand of pompous clergyman Mr Collins, to Elizabeth’s horror. Helen Moffett’s novel, Charlotte imagines the years that follow. How the marriage secures Charlotte’s future, one that includes children, grief, illicit love and eventually freedom.

The Clergyman’s Wife: a Pride and Prejudice novel by Molly Greeley similarly focuses on the next part of Charlotte’s story, which takes her to Hunsford and a life of duty. While she loves her daughter, it’s not so easy to love her husband, and her feelings are awakened by a friendship with a local farmer, a tenant of Lady Catherine de Bourgh.

With Jo Baker’s Longbourn, we’re back where Pride and Prejudice all began, only we see it all from the servants’ point of view. Somehow the feelings and disturbances above stairs pale by comparison to what’s going on below. We’ve a stern housekeeper, a starry-eyed kitchen maid, but it’s the maid Sarah who is our eyes and ears when a mysterious new footman arrives. Family secrets, romance and intrigue make for a gripping read.

Poor Mary Bennet doesn’t have the looks or charm of her P&P sisters and is often the more overlooked of the family, easy to mock for her primness and piety. The Other Bennet Sister by Janice Harlow tells her story. As her sisters marry and leave home, Mary seems doomed to remain at Longbourn until her father dies and the house is sold. And yet when that day happens, Mary discovers that perhaps there is hope for her after all.

Recently televised by the BBC, Miss Austen by Gill Hornby revolves around Cassandra Austen, twenty-three years after the death of her author sister. Increasingly frail, Cassandra visits the family of her long dead fiancé in a last-ditch chance to find some letters penned by Jane. The story weaves in the secrets the letters hold, the life of the sisters and their family, lost love and regret. This is the first book of several following members of Jane Austen’s family, including Godmersham Park and The Elopement – all well-researched and beautifully imagined.

Other authors have taken the characters of Jane Austen and brought them into a modern setting. This was the premise of the Austen Project, in which well-known authors took an Austen novel and gave it an update.

Sense and Sensibility by Joanna Trollope was the first, focusing on two very different sisters, who lose their father and beautiful home in a heartbeat. As they settle into a cottage in the country with their mother and younger sister, they receive a rude awakening about what really makes the world go round: money, influence and power. A wonderfully witty coming of age story.

We’re in Cincinnati, New York and California for Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld, a reimagining of Pride and Prejudice. Chip Bingley is a recent star of the TV reality series, Eligible, a doctor at the hospital along with best mate Darcy. Liz Bennet is a journalist; her yoga instructor sister Jane has just decided to have a child on her own. The Bennet family home is in a poor state of repair, and the parents can’t rein in their spending or that of their younger daughters. This is a witty, entertaining update any P&P fan will love.

Emma is an annoyingly interfering and smug character in the Jane Austen novel, who learns a lesson or two by the end of the book. Alexander McCall Smith’s modern Emma is about to launch her interior design business when she returns home to Highbury to live with her health-conscious father. Here she has ample opportunity to offer advice to those less wise than she is about the ways of the world.

Val McDermid is one of our best-known crime writers, an unusual choice for an Austen retelling perhaps. With Northanger Abbey, she brings Cat Morland to Edinburgh for the arts festival. Cat has a love of supernatural novels, and a chance to visit Northanger, home of a rigidly formal general and his attractive son Henry, will set her imagination going in more ways than one.

Some may say it was Jane Austen who invented the romantic comedy novel. Local author, Kate O’Keeffe has found plenty of inspo from the Darcy/Lizzie story for her Love Manor series. Emma Brady and Sebastian Huntington-Ross are modern-day versions of Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy, meeting on the set of a reality TV show. Dating Mr Darcy is a witty, charming read about the difficult path to love, an enemies-to-lovers story that kicks off a series of four books.

Unmarriageable: pride and prejudice in Pakistan by Soniah Kamal shifts the action to another continent. Alys’s family has had their reputation destroyed by scandal and rumour, so Alys has sworn never to marry. She teaches her pupils about Jane Austen in the hope they will aspire to more than settling too soon into family life. Meeting a Mr Darsee at a wedding might make her reconsider her future.

Along with romance, mysteries are one of the most popular genres in fiction. Oddly enough, Jane Austen has inspired a bunch of spin-offs that feature murder and detection.

Grand dame of crime fiction P D James brought murder to the home of Elizabeth and Fitzwilliam Darcy in Death Comes to Pemberley. The famous literary couple have been married for six years, Jane and Bingley live nearby and everything looks perfect in Pemberley. That’s until Lydia Wickham descends on the family one night, screaming that her husband has been murdered. If anyone could pull off a brilliantly layered murder mystery about the characters from Pride and Prejudice, it’s PD James. This novel was also adapted for screen.

There’s just something about the dastardly Mr Wickham that brings murder to mind. Which is probably why Claudia Gray was inspired to make him the victim in her first Mr Darcy & Miss Tilney mystery. The series’ two likeable sleuths are the younger generation: Jonathan Darcy, the son of Fitzwilliam and Elizabeth, sent off to visit a manor house in the countryside, the home of Emma and Mr Knightly (from Emma). Here he meets young Juliet Tilney, daughter of the main characters from Northanger Abbey. You get the picture. The Murder of Mr Wickham is a fun, cosy mystery featuring all your favourite Austen characters, with more books in the series to enjoy.

Veering away from the more popular Austens, Lynn Shepherd’s Murder at Mansfield Park, has Austen’s heroine Fanny Price seen from a different viewpoint. Heiress Fanny becomes a scheming minx, with Mary Crawford the unexpected saviour when tragedy strikes. Every member of the house falls under suspicion. Can Detective Charles Maddox get to the bottom of things?

While there are plenty of books that reimagine the characters of Jane Austen, Jessica Bull has found in the famous author the perfect sleuth. Miss Austen Investigates is the first of a series, and with her talent for understanding the quirks of human nature, Jane is soon on the case when murder happens. The first book has Jane at a ball where the body of a milliner is found locked in a cupboard. Jane must save her brother George who falls under suspicion. A lively, witty mystery that does Jane Austen proud, Miss Austen Investigates was shortlisted for a CWA Dagger award.

Pride and Premeditation by Tirzah Price is a Young Adult novel that casts a seventeen-year-old Lizzie Bennet in a modern-day mystery. Lizzie’s an aspiring lawyer desperate to prove herself when a scandalous murder shocks London high society. Mr Darcy - the young heir to Pemberley Associates - is both sternly interfering and outrageously attractive. Sense and Second-Degree Murder is the second in the series and pitches aspiring scientist Elinor Dashwood (Sense and Sensibility) into investigating the death of her beloved father.

Finally, here are three books that celebrate all things Austen in quite different ways. The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler brings together two things that are perfect for feel-good novels – Jane Austen and book clubs. Six Californians join a book club to discuss the books of Jane Austen, as for each their lives are turned upside down by troubles in love and relationships. Can the books of Jane Austen offer solace or even solutions?

The Jane Austen Project by Kathleen A Flynn explores what happens in a future where time travel is possible. Two researchers are sent back in time to meet Jane Austen and with luck recover a previously unpublished novel. Rachel and Liam have little in common but are brought together by the extraordinary circumstances in which they find themselves. Rachel must manage the constraints on women in 19^th century society, while both need to deal with a directive to leave history as they find it.

Ladies in Waiting: Jane Austen’s Unsung Characters is a new release – a short story anthology celebrating the minor cast members from Jane Austen’s novels. Eight authors bring their own Austenish inspiration to honour the writer’s 250^th anniversary, among them: Adriana Trigiani, Elinor Lipman and Diana Quincey, across a variety of genres.

Whatever your tastes in fiction, there's likely an Austen novel or spin-off to suite you. Happy reading!

Posted by JAM

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