Dancing with Mr Darcy: Stories Inspired by Jane Austen

Introduction

Falling in Love with Jane

I fell in love with the novels of Jane Austen when I was thirteen. I remember sitting in a 1950s prefab that was more greenhouse than classroom. We had wooden slanting desks, the inkwells stuffed with gum and chewed paper. I would have loved a proper inkwell with proper ink. The school was in Dorking, and the view from the playing fields was of Box Hill. That was the only picturesque element. There was no Mr Darcy. I don’t know if the boys were reluctant to dance as I didn’t go to the discos. I do remember their bobbly nylon blazers, and how skilled some of them were in the trapping and torture of wasps.

There was a Wickham, a disreputable ginger tom who moved in with my family. We never knew his real name. One day he disappeared (eloped? off with the militia?) leaving me with nothing but rings of flea bites around my ankles. I told people that they were mosquito bites, hoping to give myself the glamorous aura of a girl whose family took foreign holidays during term-time. These were difficult years. We understood only too well the precariousness of some Austen heroines’ situations.

It is the appeal of her heroines that makes Austen’s work so enduringly popular. She challenged her readers by offering them characters and heroines who were not always immediately engaging. Many of the competition entrants sought to give voices and new destinies to some of the less appealing or more minor characters. There were hundreds of entries. Reading them was a delight; choosing a shortlist was horrible. Fanny Price, Mary Bennet and Miss Bates (or later incarnations of them) proved to be very popular subjects. I particularly liked a story in which Mary Bennet had a happy ending as a seafarer. I wondered whether the writer of that one had once wished she was Lizzy, but feared that she was more like Mary; I know I did.

The love and appreciation of Austen’s works is evident in the stories collected here. I applaud the winner, Victoria Owens, for having something critical to say, something that goes beyond cap doffing.

So here they are – twenty stories inspired by Jane Austen or Chawton House Library. Let the love affair continue.

Rebecca Smith

June, 2009