Bibliography of Jane Austen Sequels

"She would, if asked, tell us many little particulars about the subsequent career of some of her people. In this traditionary way we learned that Miss Steele never succeeded in catching the Doctor; that Kitty Bennet was satisfactorily married to a clergyman near Pemberley, while Mary obtained nothing higher than one of her uncle Philips' clerks, and was content to be considered a star in the society of Meriton; that the ``considerable sum'' given by Mrs. Norris to William Price was one pound; that Mr. Woodhouse survived his daughter's marriage, and kept her and Mr. Knightley from settling at Donwell, about two years; and that the letters placed by Frank Churchill before Jane Fairfax, which she swept away unread, contained the word ``pardon''. Of the good people in Northanger Abbey and Persuasion we know nothing more than what is written: for before those works were published their author had been taken away from us, and all such amusing communications had ceased for ever."
-- James Edward Austen-Leigh, Memoir (1870)

"According to a less well-known tradition, the delicate Jane Fairfax lived only another nine or ten years after her marriage to Frank Churchill."
-- Austen-Leigh and Le Faye, Jane Austen: A Family Record (1989), p. 216


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This file lists novels which are sequels to Jane Austen's novels, and also fiction about Jane Austen herself. (It does not include plays adapted from Jane Austen's novels.) Thanks to Marjorie Shustak for suggesting this list, and providing a number of entries, and to Edith Lank and others for their suggestions. Other entries came from Sachs' and Hopkinsons' articles in Grey et. al. (which are listed below, along with a few other articles on Jane Austen sequels and continuations). (standard on-line library catalogs aren't necessarily very useful in finding this kind of thing). In the list below, the date and publisher are generally those of a book's first publication (some of the books are currently out of print).

Many of the sequels have their inaccuracies -- Joan Aiken's Jane Fairfax has women attending a funeral and a young never-married gentlewoman going unaccompanied on a long journey by public coach as matters of routine, while Barrett's Presumption, among other errors, gets the names of Darcy's parents wrong, and has a party of seven all sitting down to play a game of whist! The Sanditon completion by Dobbs gets extra points for its firm grasp of the proprieties of interaction between young unmarried unrelated men and women.

On the AUSTEN-L list, the recent Pride and Prejudice sequels by Emma Tennant have been almost universally execrated, while Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor has been rated as the best of the recent commercially-published Jane Austen para-literature. See below at the end of this file for a posting from AUSTEN-L that classifies the various types of material derived from Austen's writings.

For reviews of some of the following books, see the Pemberley sequels review page, and also the following plain-text files of collected comments from the Jane Austen discussion list (AUSTEN-L):


*See also the Republic of Pemberley "Fan Fiction" stories ("Bits of Ivory" archive)

(Another Austen sequels etc. bibliography is located at http://webdoc.sub.gwdg.de/edoc/ia/eese/breuer/biblio.html.)

List of Sequels, etc.

  1. Joan Aiken, Eliza's Daughter: Sequel to Sense and Sensibility (St. Martin's Press, 1994). [From the blurb, this somewhat picaresque novel goes where a Jane Austen heroine never went -- into the literary circle of the Romantics, onto the Continent of Europe, etc.]
  2. Joan Aiken, Jane Fairfax: A Novel to Complement Emma by Jane Austen (Gollancz, 1990). [OK, but not great; drastically cuts even those Jane Austen dialogues which throw the most light on Jane Austen's idea of Jane Fairfax.]
  3. Joan Aiken, Mansfield Revisited: A Novel (Doubleday & Co., 1984). [About Fanny Price's younger sister Susan; doesn't do a very good job of capturing the atmosphere of early 19th century society, and is rather perfunctory in re-creating situations from the original book, with Julia the new Mrs. Norris, Susan Price the new Fanny, etc.]
  4. Joan Aiken, Emma Watson (St. Martin's Press, 1996). [A rewriting of The Watsons -- not a simple continuation of Jane Austen's incomplete beginning.]
  5. Dorothy Allen and Ann Owen, Mansfield Park: An Alternative Ending (Kay and Douglas, Coventry, 1989). [17-page booklet; wish-fulfillment for all you Crawfordites. ;-)
    Click here for a concept illustration for another possible alternative ending to Mansfield Park (one that many people may find just as believable as Allen and Owen's effort! ;-)). And also see What Fanny Price would have to do for some people not to find her "insipid"!]
  6. "Another", The Watsons, by Jane Austen and another (P. Davies, 1977).
  7. Helen Ashton, Parson Austen's Daughter, A Novel (Collins, 1949). [A fictionalized, novelistic biography of Jane Austen and her family, written years before they invented the TV docudrama!]
  8. Paula Atchia, Mansfield Letters, a sequel to Mansfield Park (The Book Guild Ltd., 1996) [Not published in the U.S.?]
  9. Joan Austen-Leigh, A Visit to Highbury: Another View of Emma [also known as Mrs. Goddard, Mistress of a School] (A Room of One's Own Press, 1993). [Epistolary.]
  10. Joan Austen-Leigh, Later Days at Highbury: A Novel (St. Martins, 1996). [Apparently sequel to the above.]
  11. Janet Aylmer, Darcy's Story (Copperfield Books, 1996). [The events of Pride and Prejudice from Darcy's point of view; has gotten reasonably good reviews from some of the women of the Pride and Prejudice bulletin board at the `Republic of Pemberley' (a Jane Austen discussion board site), though there are a number of typos.] (Go to official publisher's page)
  12. Ted Bader and Marilyn Bader, Desire & Duty: A Sequel to Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice (Revive, 1997). (Go to authors' web page)
  13. Julia Barrett, Presumption: An Entertainment (M. Evans, 1993). [Sequel to Pride and Prejudice; somewhat shallow; has numerous minor errors. "Julia Barrett" is a pseudonym of Gabrielle Donnelly and Julia Braun Kessler.]
  14. Julia Barrett, The Third Sister: A Sequel to Sense and Sensibility (Donald I. Fine, 1996). [From the title, this obviously focuses on Margaret Dashwood. "Julia Barrett" apparently are ambitious to be the new Emma Tennant. One of Kessler's near and dear ones (or maybe Kessler herself pretending to be somebody else) is a peculiar character of dubious mental stability, who periodically sends me harrassing e-mails for saying true things about the "Barrett" books on this WWW page. Hi jkessler@ucla.edu!]
  15. Lily Adams Beck ("E. Barrington"), The ladies! A shining constellation of Wit and Beauty (The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1922). [Includes "The Darcys of Rosings", a rather slight melodramatic trifle which includes characters from Sense and Sensibility, gets the name of Hunsford wrong ("Hunsdon"), and has Elizabeth and Darcy's daughters named "Charlotte" and "Caroline"!]
  16. (Lady) Rachel Billington, Perfect Happiness (Sceptre, 1996) [Sequel to Emma, apparently involving some problems in the Emma-Knightley marriage; Emma Tennant's publishers declared all-out "war" on this book, which is enough to prepossess one in its favor, whatever its actual merits or demerits may be.]
  17. Dorothy Alice Bonavia-Hunt, Pemberley Shades: A Novel (E. P. Dutton, 1949). [Rated by Glancy as the best of the early sequels to Pride and Prejudice; sometimes aims too high in attempting to imitate Austen and falls noticeably short, but is not actively bad; plot devices not entirely credible.]
  18. Rolf Breuer, "Jane Austen etc.: An Essay on the Poetics of the Sequel" (1999) [Academic paper containing mini-reviews of several sequels, and general discussion; on-line at http://webdoc.sub.gwdg.de/edoc/ia/eese/breuer/essay.html]
  19. Rolf Breuer, "Jane Austen etc.: Bibliography of The Completions, Continuations and Adaptations of Her Novels" (1999) [Bibliography much like this one; on-line at http://webdoc.sub.gwdg.de/edoc/ia/eese/breuer/biblio.html]
  20. Sybil G. Brinton, Old Friends and New Fancies: An Imaginary Sequel to the Novels of Jane Austen (1913). [A sequel to Pride and Prejudice, and a real farrago, involving characters from all the novels, according to the descriptions of Sachs and Glancy.]
  21. Edith Charlotte (Hubback) Brown, The Watsons. Completed in accordance with her intentions by Edith (her great grand-niece) and Francis Brown (E. Mathews & Marrot, 1928).
  22. Edith Charlotte (Hubback) Brown, Margaret Dashwood, or Interference. (1929). [Sequel to Sense and Sensibility.]
  23. Edith Charlotte (Hubback) Brown, Susan Price, or Resolution (1930). [Sequel to Mansfield Park.]
  24. John Coates, The Watsons; Jane Austen's fragment continued and completed by John Coates (Methuen, 1958). [Reasonably entertaining in itself, and more successful in capturing the feel of early 19th century society than many of the other sequels, but probably much lighter and cheerier than Austen had originally intended the book to turn out; changes Emma Watson to "Emily".]
  25. Alice Cobbett, Somehow Lengthened: A Development of Sanditon (1932).
  26. Mary Corringham, I, Jane Austen: a re-creation in rime royal based on the letters of Jane Austen, her novels and the comments of her biographers (Routledge and K. Paul, 1971). [??]
  27. Howard Fast, The novelist: A Romantic Portrait of Jane Austen, (S. French, 1992). [Apparently a play about Jane Austen's mysterious seaside romance.]
  28. Kate Fenton, Lions and Liquorice (1995, Michael Joseph). [A modern comic version of Pride and Prejudice -- the making of a movie version of the novel, with the personalities of the modern characters who correspond to Elizabeth and Darcy somewhat reversed. Has gotten good reviews from the women of the Pride and Prejudice bulletin board at the `Republic of Pemberley' (a Jane Austen discussion board site).]
  29. Esther Friesner, "Pride and Prescience" (in It's Been Fun: Author's Choice Monthly, issue 23, August 1991, Pulphouse Publishing.) [Humorous fantasy short story, in which a Lizzy Bennett-like heroine saves Regency England from an alien invasion using the qualities named in the title.]
  30. Jane Gillespie, Aunt Celia (St. Martin's Press, 1991). [A sequel to Emma; described as "forgettable" or "perfunctory" by those who have read it.]
  31. Jane Gillespie, Brightsea (St. Martin's Press, 1987). [Sequel to Sense and Sensibility; focuses on Anne Steele?]
  32. Jane Gillespie, Ladysmead (St. Martin's Press, 1982). [Sequel to Mansfield Park, concerning Mrs. Norris and Maria Bertram's arrival in a country neighborhood.]
  33. Jane Gillespie, Teverton Hall (St. Martin's Press, 1983). [Sequel to Pride and Prejudice; deals with Mr. Collins and family.]
  34. Jane Gillespie Uninvited Guests, A sequel to Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey (1994, Janus). [Possibly the first-ever Northanger Abbey sequel; focuses on Isabella Thorpe.]
    [So when are you coming out with your Persuasion sequel, Ms. Gillespie?]
  35. Kathleen Glancy, "What Happened Next? Or, The Many Husbands of Georgiana Darcy", Persuasions (Journal of the Jane Austen Society of North-America, Dec. 1989.)
  36. Victor Gordon, Mrs. Rushworth: a novel (Andre Deutsch, 1989). [Obviously to do with Mansfield Park.]
  37. Jean Gould, Jane (Houghton Mifflin, 1947). [Another fictionalized biography of Austen, reportedly not very good. Illustrated by Jean Stahl.]
  38. Eleanor Holmes Hinkley, Dear Jane, a play [Highly fictionalized account of Austen's life, apparently based very loosely on the Bigg-Wither incident.]
  39. David Hopkinson, "Completions", in The Jane Austen Companion, J. David Grey ed. (Macmillan, 1986).
  40. Catherine Anne Hubback, The Younger Sister: A Novel (T. C. Newby, 1850). [By a niece of Jane Austen's; based on The Watsons, and yes, that must be the same publisher who had stiffed Emily and Anne Brontë a few years before!]
  41. Joan Mason Hurley, Our own particular Jane (A Room of One's Own Press, 1975). ["A piece of theatre based on the life, letters, and literature of Jane Austen."]
  42. Kathleen Viola James-Cavan, Readers as Writers: A Study of Austen's The Watsons and Sanditon and Their Completions by Subsequent Writers (Queen's University dissertation, 1993).
  43. Lisa Kirazian, The Visitor (Laurel, 1996). [Story of a frustrated thesis-writer who gets a visit from the subject of her dissertation, Jane Austen.]
  44. Phyllis Ann Karr, Lady Susan (Everest House, 1980). [Novel constructed from the original epistolary (letter) format of Jane Austen's Lady Susan.]
  45. Anna Austen Lefroy, Jane Austen's Sanditon: a continuation by her niece. (Chiron Press, 1983). [This continuation of Jane Austen's unfinished fragment is itself unfinished.]
  46. Marianne Luban, The Samaritan Treasure: stories (Coffee House Press, 1990). [Includes the short story "The Jew of Bath", which deals with a romance involving Jane Austen; totally implausible, but still kind of cute.]
  47. Francine Mathews, Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor: being the first Jane Austen Mystery (Bantam Books, 1996). (Go to official publisher's page) [According to info posted on AUSTEN-L: "Bantam Books is publishing three books set in Georgian England which purport to be recently discovered diary accounts of Jane Austen's adventures as a detective. Author: Stephanie Barron (Francine Mathews)."]
  48. Francine Mathews, Jane and the Man of the Cloth: being the second Jane Austen Mystery (Bantam Books, 1997). (Go to official publisher's page)
  49. Barron, Stephanie, Jane and the Wandering Eye (Bantam Books, 1998). (Go to official publisher's page)
  50. "Memoir", Gambles and Gambols -- A Visit with Old Friends (Shelter Cover, 1983). [Sequel to Mansfield Park; Wickham makes an appearance.]
  51. June Menzies, His Cunning or Hers: A Postscript to Persuasion (University of Alberta, 1993). [Epistolary sequel with choice of endings; illustrated by Juliet McMaster.]
  52. Elizabeth Newark, Consequence, Or, Whatever Became of Charlotte Lucas (New Ark Productions, 1997) [Pride and Prejudice, the next generation; cute, but rather slight.]
  53. L. Oulton, The Watsons (1923).
  54. Anne and Arthur Russell, The wedding at Pemberley: a footnote to Pride and Prejudice, a play in one act (H.F.W. Deane, 1949). [About Georgiana Darcy.]
  55. Marilyn Sachs, "The Sequels to Jane Austen's Novels", in The Jane Austen Companion, J. David Grey ed. (Macmillan, 1986).
  56. Rosemary Anne Sisson, The young Jane Austen (Max Parrish, 1962). [Partly fictional biography; illustrated by Denise Brown.]
  57. Naomi Royde Smith, Jane Fairfax (1940). [Not really a sequel to Emma in terms of internal chronology; from Jane Fairfax's point of view; includes some characters from Pride and Prejudice.]
  58. Anne Telscombe [=Marie Dobbs], Sanditon, by Jane Austen and another lady (Houghton Mifflin, 1975). [Imitates Jane Austen's style fairly well; deflates the melodramatic pretensions of bodice-ripping novels in a somewhat different way than Austen did, but is still amusing; the éclaircissement in the last few pages is weak. Apparently "Anne Telscombe" is a pseudonym for "Marie Dobbs", or vice versa -- or maybe they're both pseudonyms for the same person. This completion may become a Hollywood movie.]
  59. Emma Tennant, Pemberley: Or Pride and Prejudice Continued (St. Martin's Press, 1993).
  60. Emma Tennant, An Unequal Marriage: Or Pride and Prejudice Twenty Years Later (St. Martin's Press, 1994).
  61. Emma Tennant, Elinor and Marianne (Simon and Schuster, 1996). [Epistolary sequel to Sense and Sensibility; greeted among literary types and Janeites with the customary lack of rapturous enthusiasm that a Tennant sequel to Austen causes.]
  62. Emma Tennant, Emma in Love (Fourth Estate, 1996) [Emma Tennant has apparently tried to salvage her usual incompetence in writing an Austen sequel by spicing it up with a little artificial and excrescent "lesbian" controversy, God help us all. One thing I won't ever believe is that the marriage of Emma and Mr. Knightley is unconsummated?!?!?.]
  63. Judith Terry, Miss Abigail's part, or, Version and diversion (Cape, 1986). [Mansfield Park from the point of view of a maid servant, focusing on Henry Crawford and Maria and Julia Bertram.]
  64. Judith Terry, "`Knit Your Own Stuff'; Or, Finishing Off Jane Austen", Persuasions (Journal of the Jane Austen Society of North-America, Dec. 1986.)
  65. Cedric Wallis, The Heiress of Rosings (Samuel French, 1956). [Play which is a sequel to Pride and Prejudice; about Anne de Bourgh's wedding, and Mr. Collins' indiscretions with the chambermaid (or the functional equivalent thereof).]
  66. T. H. White, Darkness at Pemberley (V. Gollancz, 1932). [Rather formulaic and unconvincing mystery story, set among descendents of Elizabeth and Darcy at Pemberley.]
  67. Barbara Ker Wilson, Antipodes Jane: a novel of Jane Austen in Australia / Jane Austen in Australia: a novel (Secker & Warburg, 1984). [What if Mrs. Perrot, accused and acquitted of stealing lace, had instead been convicted and sentenced to be "transported" to Australia, and her niece Jane Austen had accompanied her?]
  68. Andrew Wright, "Jane Austen Adapted", Nineteenth Century Fiction (vol. 30, #3, December 1975, pp.421-453) [lists sequels and continuations published up to that time, as well as stage, screen, radio, and television adaptations of the novels.]

Date: Thu, 23 May 1996 15:10:35 EST
From: Ted Adams
Subject: The Value of Criticism and Pastiches

Di Worth wrote May 21:

> I can't believe that Austen enthusiasts would bother to take Austen sequels seriously.

The adaptations, completions, sequels, pastiches and other attempts to tap into the Jane Austen industry (and one must include movie and television adaptations) devolve from a most noble sentiment: We have read the six published novels and we want more. We want more and different insights into both the novels and into the type of person that Jane Austen was.

Adaptations are transformations into another medium, e.g., stage, screen and television. (I also include recorded books in this category. Some might disagree on the grounds that an unabridged recorded book, at least, is Jane Austen's words, nothing more, nothing less. However I think a tremendous interpretive effort is necessary to do a successful out-loud reading. Certainly an author's words count for a lot in a recorded book, but the reader is the difference between success and failure.)

Completions are the finishing off of a novel fragment. Jane Austen's two fragments, The Watsons and Sanditon have been attempted a number of times.

Sequels are a continuation of the action. To my knowledge, nobody has written a "prequel", which would be a description of what occurred before the action started.

Pastiches are work written in the style of Jane Austen. Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor is a pastiche. Its premise is that it is a notebook that Jane Austen kept concerning events during a period for which we do not have documentation.

I do not know what to call works that do not pretend to emanate from Jane Austen's pen and that are set contemporaneously with the action of one of the novels. (Jane Fairfax by Joan Aiken comes to mind as an example.) Likewise I don't know what to call a story in which Jane Austen appears as a character but which does not pretend to be narrated from her point of view. (Historical Fiction?)

I am not sure of the proper terminology to use to cover all the phenomena in this category. As a point of simplicity, I'll refer to the whole subject as "pastiche".

Certainly no Jane Austen pastiche will ever be as good as the original, but that is to be expected. Mind you, when the standard is one of the best writers in the English language, to fall short of the mark is no disgrace. To write with wit, economy, great insight and develop complex and interesting characters is no mean feat. After all, we read Jane Austen with great pleasure 200 years later because she compares well not only with her contemporaries but also with ours and everybody who has come in between.

Personally, I enjoy pastiches for much the same reason that I sometimes enjoy Jane Austen criticism. Even when a pastiche fails or fall short, it can be interesting to try understand how or why it comes up short. And in the meantime, I've read a story that really has no requirement to be taken seriously. (This is the advantage of pastiches over criticism. Criticism takes itself seriously whether it deserves to be or not. Pastiches on the other hand, because they are conceived as entertainment, must first entertain to be successful.) By putting entertainment ahead of insight, the successful pastiche, if it has insights to share, has to present those insights in a highly palatable manner.

The questions I would ask of a pastiche are the same that I ask of criticism: Is the work interesting/entertaining in its own right? How faithful it to spirit of Jane Austen's novels? Does it provide insights into the work in question and/or the character of Jane Austen? Emma Tennant's ignorance of Jane Austen is so monumental that it takes my breath away.

I rate as reasonably successful Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor. While the idea of Jane regularly mixing with earls, countesses, and duchesses and spending a couple of months separated from her family is difficult to swallow, Stephanie Barron does draw a character that is a reasonable conjecture about the character of Jane Austen. Moreover, she deals nicely with the inherent limitations of having a semi-young lady of the first decade of the 19th century who is a clergyman's daughter as her detective. The character of Eliza de Feuillide is a romp. I would give this effort a B- which is pretty good, considering that in this school you have to be as good as Jane Austen to get an A.


(For further discussion of types of Jane Austen para-literature, see an essay by Rolf Breuer.)



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