To anyone who is interested in Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, the Brontes, well-written sequels and fan fiction relating to the foregoing, quirky poems, accessible literary essays, the roles of class and gender in literature and society, or the musings of a book- and film-loving woman with original, distinctive (and occasionally rather racy) perspectives and insights --
You are cordially invited to check out ElizabethNewark.blogspot.com. Elizabeth Newark, my mother, posts short works from her extensive archive of writings several times a week, along with occasional new pieces and comments. She is new to blogging, so please be kind as you welcome her to the blogosphere.
Her playful short novel The Darcys Give a Ball, previously self-published under the title Consequence: Or Whatever Happened to Charlotte Lucas?, has just been released by SourceBooks. The novel, which has been praised by earlier readers as among the best-written of the Austen sequels, follows the adventures of the offspring of several of the characters of Pride and Prejudice, with a particular focus on how the marriage of Charlotte Lucas and Mr. Collins turned out. (See also her persuasive essay In Praise of Charlotte Lucas, written for the Jane Austen Society of North America.)
Within the next year or so, SourceBooks will also be publishing her excellent longer novel Jane Eyre's Daughter (also previously self-published), which builds on a premise that some will find rather disturbing but follows it most beautifully to a satisfying conclusion.
I am extremely proud of her!
2 comments:
I got my copy of Darcys Give a Ball a couple of days ago and have already finished it. It was even better than I remembered from reading the self-published version a few years ago. Also, unlike some other Austen pastiches (is pastiche a plural?) of recent years, Elizabeth Newark's book has a tone much closer to Austen than the bodice-ripper romances. The blog is fun, too.
I just learned a new term for this type of writing: paraliterature. Since the prefix "para" means "beside," "alongside," or "closely related to," it works pretty well to cover the whole genre of sequels, tributes, alternative narratives, etc.
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