Why We Can’t Stop Reading — and Writing — Jane Austen Sequels

By Sarah Seltzer on Oct 24, 2014 - Flavorwire

Death Comes to Pemberley comes to American TV screens this Sunday night (be not alarmed, dear sirs and madams, for Flavorwire will provide recaps of each installment). For those who don’t know, it’s a mini-series based on a book by P.D. James which is itself a mystery novel based on the characters and locations from Pride and Prejudice. This unauthorized sequel places the married Elizabeth and Darcy and their estate in the middle of a British murder mystery with clues hidden on the grounds, ancestral secrets and frowning magistrates galore. 

So desperately did readers want to return to Pemberley under competent authorial guidance that the book ruled the bestseller charts for quite some time — even if many readers felt it was neither particularly true to Austen nor gripping of its own merit: “A hideous, plodding, ungraceful piece of mawkish fanfiction that succeeds neither as a mystery or as a pastiche of Austen’s most beloved novel,” reads my favorite nasty Goodreads review. … Read More