INTRODUCTION

I suspect the proliferation of Austen sequels and related novels is partly inspired by the Colin Firth version of Pride and Prejudice in 1996, and partly by the rediscovery of Austen herself.

Her ironic wit and her sense of decency are both bewitching in anxious modern times. In Austen’s world, there are no terrorists, no bombs, no urban blight or global warming—all the anxious bits of modern life that we are helpless to fix.

In Austen’s world, what a woman thinks and does matters. The deserving get good lives, the undeserving live with the consequences of their actions. But she only wrote six novels.

So of course people are going to revisit that world by imagining what happened later to their favorite characters, or by placing new characters in the familiar world. According to James Austen-Leigh’s memoir about his aunt, Jane Austen herself talked with her siblings and nieces about what would happen to the characters after the books.

It was fun for me to write these stories, three of them being Austen sequels, and one story about Jane Austen herself, giving her an adventure of the sort she never had.

The first and last, “The Poignant Sting” and “Miss Austen’s Castle Tour,” have a bit of magic. The middle two, alternate postscripts to Mansfield Park (the third, longer one, is published separately as Henry and Fanny), have no magic. Both of these include characters from other novels whose future lives I tried to imagine.