Why I Write Austen Variations: Guest post by Rebecca Ann Collins, author of Expectations of Happiness

I’m thrilled to have Rebecca Ann Collins as a guest on Diary of an Eccentric today.  She is the author of The Pemberley Chronicles Series, which follows the characters of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.  Her latest novel, Expectations of Happiness, is a sequel to Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, and I will be reviewing it here tomorrow.  I’ve always been curious about what inspires writers to devote their time to continuing or re-imagining the works of other authors, and Ms. Collins has been kind enough to tell us her story.  Please give a warm welcome to Rebecca Ann Collins:

Thank you for inviting me to contribute to your blog; it is a pleasure to speak directly to you and your readers. You ask “What prompted these authors to devote much of their writing to Jane Austen’s novels and characters?”

I’m afraid I cannot speak for other writers, but I can tell you why this author decided, after many years of reading and studying Jane Austen’s work at school and at University, to write a companion volume to Pride and Prejudice. I have told this story before – but I daresay it can be re-told here, in answer to your question.

In 1996 – following the BBC’s superb production of Pride and Prejudice – a well meaning niece sent me two books by a well known writer – which claimed to be “continuations of Pride and Prejudice.” I read them with some interest and was deeply disappointed to discover that Jane Austen’s beloved characters had been distorted and presented as some figures in a Regency- style soap opera. They behaved not as mature, intelligent characters, as one would have expected of Elizabeth and Mr Darcy, but like spoilt, ill tempered, often silly types, with very little to redeem them apart from their looks and their so- called “passion” for each other – which they proclaimed in highly contrived language. Nothing remained of the original Austen characters, whose development from a state of inordinate Pride and Prejudice to a more mature understanding and love of each other was the theme of that classic romance – still one of the most popular books in English literature.

It was such a letdown; I wrote to the publisher and asked why they permitted such poor quality work to be sold as sequels to one of the classic novels of English Literature. The answer was a polite challenge – “if you feel you can do better, why not write your own sequel to Pride and Prejudice?” It was a challenge I could not resist.

Which is how I came to spend the next eighteen months in researching and writing the first volume of The Pemberley Chronicles Series – which was published in Australia at the end of 1997 and then reprinted several times in the next two years. The popularity of the book and the many encouraging reviews and readers comments it received led to the next volume – The Women of Pemberley – and so on, until we had a series of ten books, on the lives of the Pemberley families, covering about fifty years of English political and social history from the Regency to the Victorian age.

I have researched the historical, social and literary background of the time very thoroughly; it is a period of which I made a particular study at University and I found it a very dynamic and interesting era in English history.

I also share a number of Miss Austen’s own values and have great empathy for the characters and themes that dominate her novels. While I admire her literary style, I make no attempt to imitate it; I feel that would be presumptuous indeed. Instead I have devised a fairly generic 19th century narrative style, with which my readers seem to be quite comfortable.

The Pemberley Series was subsequently picked up by Sourcebooks, for reprinting in the USA and my reward has been the response of my publishers and readers and the many times that I have been told that Miss Austen herself would have enjoyed the books. My excuse for continuing with the genre – into the new book – Expectations of Happiness which is a companion volume to Jane Austen’s first novel – Sense and Sensibility – is that I love telling a story and I felt there was one about the Dashwood sisters which had been left untold.

I hope that my readers will agree and look forward to hearing from them.

Thank you again,

Rebecca Ann Collins.

Thanks to Rebecca Ann Collins for sharing her story and for writing a variation of a different Austen novel.  I love the Pride and Prejudice variations, but I think Austen’s other novels deserve some attention, too.

If you’re interested in reading Expectations of Happiness, you’re in luck!  Sourcebooks would like to offer a copy to one lucky reader.  To enter, simply leave a comment with your e-mail address and tell me what you think makes a good Austen variation.  Because the publisher is shipping the book, this giveaway is open to readers with addresses in the U.S. and Canada only.  This giveaway will close at 11:59 pm EST on Sunday, October 30, 2011.

**Please note that this giveaway is now closed**

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