Jane Austen’s ‘Pride & Prejudice’ goes next gen – 4 stars ***

By Gabrielle Pantera

HOLLYWOOD, CA (Hollywood Today) 6/27/08 – Author Rebecca Ann Collins follows the characters from the end of Jane Austen’s classic ‘Pride & Prejudice’ and proceeds into the next generation, giving new dimension to the story of Elizabeth and Jane Bennett and the men they married.

“It’s unthinkable,” says Collins, “that these intelligent, educated and cultured men and women could have frittered away their days concerned only with affairs and marriages, while all the great issues of the era, the things that Charlotte Bronte, George Elliott and Charles Dickens were writing about, swirled around them.”

Each chapter of The Women of Pemberley tells a separate story of the five different women of Pemberley. Jane’s daughter Emma Bingley is devoted to her daughters. Elizabeth’s daughter Cassandra Darcy is a doctor’s wife with three young children. Cassandra’s cousin Emily Gardiner is finding happiness in her second marriage. Colonel Fitzwilliam’s daughter Isabella is troubled by the loss of her brother, killed in a riding accident. And the granddaughter of Charlotte Collins, 19-year-old Josie Tate, seems resolved to never have children herself.

That Collins set the children in the Victorian age gives the story a new turn. Each girl has her own chapter, with her life told as a separate short story. The other characters are woven throughout each chapter. The structure is unusual, but it works. Collins does well at keeping the feel of Austen’s novels. Collins reveals how the original generation of ‘Pride & Prejudice’ feels about what the younger generation does.

A lifelong fan of Jane Austen, Rebecca Ann Collins first read ‘Pride & Prejudice’ at the age of twelve. Collins loves Jane Austen’s work so much that she’s written ten sequels to ‘Pride & Prejudice’. Of the many sequels to P&P that I’ve read, ‘The Women of Pemberley’ comes closest to feel of the original.

Originally self-published in Australia by Rebecca Ann Collins, the Pemberley series has been quite successful there with over 80,000 books sold. The Pemberley novels cover two-thirds of the 19th century. ‘The Women of Pemberley’ is her second book that Sourcebook Press is releasing in the United States. Her stories are well written. We can look forward to the next in the series being released here.

‘The Women of Pemberley’
A Companion Volume to The Pemberley Chronicles: Book 2
The Pemberley Chronicles
By Rebecca Ann Collins
Trade Paperback, 304 pages, $14.95
Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark
Release date: April 1, 2008
ISBN 978-1402211546