Wednesday 14 February 2018

Book review: Old Friends and New Fancies


The subtitle of this book really says it all: 'An imaginary sequel to the novels of Jane Austen'. And not just any sequel, one of the dozens which are released every year, no, this is the first published Austen sequel, from 1913. In Old Friends and New Fancies (love the title BTW!), Brinton intertwines the lives of characters from each of Austen's six major novels. The main characters are three ladies left unmarried at the end of their 'own' novels: Georgiana Darcy, Kitty Bennet and Mary Crawford. All three will fall in love and will feel the pangs of being kept apart by social or economical tensions.