Hardcover - 184 pages (December 1993) St Martins Pr (Trade); ISBN: 0312107935 amazon.com Audiobook Audio Cassette edition (September 1995)  Chivers Audio Books; ISBN: 0745127290 amazon.ca

amazon.co.uk Paperback ( 6 October, 1994)  Sceptre; ISBN: 034060963X Audiobook Audio Cassette ( 1 September, 1994)      Hodder & Stoughton Audio Books; ISBN: 1859980023

] I am trying to read Pemberley now

please, I beg you; Don't do it! it's truly horrible!

To tie this book to the original, she sometimes quotes several of Jane Austen's lines but, often, the context is incorrect.  She also gets several facts wrong. For example, Georgiana Darcy is older than Mary Bennett and taller than Lizzy.  Lizzy and Darcy have been married for one year and Jane has a baby that is 1-year old and Lydia and Wickham have 4 children.

The plot resembles a badly written soap opera. Lizzy appears to be barren and thinks that Darcy has an illegitimate child that he is hiding from her.  Pemberley is entailed to the male line. Mrs. Bennet gets a marriage proposal from a very vulgar and unscrupulous man. Georgiana teams with Caroline Bingley to make fun of Lizzy and her family.  At the end, all the intrigues are resolved rather quickly and unbelievably.

In conclusion, I agree with the evaluations of this novel that I have read here previously; it is no good!  Because I feel that each person should form her/his own opinion, I recommend that you read it if you come across it.  I do not, however, recommend that you buy it; I am sure that you would be very, very disappointed if you expected anything remotely resembling Jane Austen's masterpiece.

Mr Bennet is dead and Mrs Bennet is being courted by a relative but I really don't know if he was a con man or just a jerk.  There is a know-it-all cousin brought by Lady Catherine since she thinks Lizzie is not going to have children for some reason. I guess because after a year she is not with child. The cousin is to inherit Pemberley as Darcy has no children and he winds up married to Mary.

Darcy gets mad at Lizzy and takes off for London without telling her and leaving her with the entire crew but after they all go.  She leaves for Longborne to visit Charlotte and Yuk. She tells Charlotte that she is going to get a job as a governess because she thinks that Darcy has an illegitimate child by a mysterious French woman. While there she finds out that she is pregnant.

Lady Catherine comes to tell her that she must return to Pemberley, that she has no right to leave without informing Darcy, who is still in London with Georgiana and Miss Bingley hitting the Court of Saint James and the opera.  She tells Lady Catherine to get lost and prepares to go to London to go to work when Mary informs her that Jane is very ill, so she rushes to Jane's side only to find that the
French woman was Bingley's mistress and the 6 year old boy is his, and Darcy has been taking care of him for Bingley. She overhears Bingley tell Darcy that Jane has accepted the child in one of her lucid moments but he is afraid that she is not going to live. Lizzy cries that Jane shall not die and falls down the stairs and is out of it for a time only to waken to find Darcy begging her forgiveness and the child she carries is well and they live happily ever after.

         Posted by Carrie on September 25, 1997 at 10:30:15:
Were I Ms. Tennant I would certainly not enjoy reading these posts. However, I have to agree with the others. After seeing P&P2 I rushed out to the library and of course all the P&P were out so I tried "Pemberley", and so I was disappointed twice. The ending was awful, with Elizabeth fainting and tripping on the stairs. It was embarrassing to read!

         Posted by Courtney on September 25, 1997 at 18:06:38:
I can't agree more. The Tennant books are absolutely awful; I cannot warn a serious Austen lover enough about avoiding this emetic drivel. The Aiken books have been written with taste and sympathy for the period; they are but pallid reflections of the True Jane, but they are not embarrassing.

        Posted by Becca M. on December 03, 1997 at 23:38:07:
I too recently discovered the sequels to P&P. I have just started reading Pemberley. So far it is OK. Tennant does not have the style of Jane Austen. But it is interesting to explore possible outcomes for these characters.

        Posted by Rachel on December 03, 1997 at 20:53:01:
Did we read the same book?!?!? I read both books, and I ended up screaming and crying. In MHO, Emma Tennant's books were trash, especially An Unequal Marriage. Darcy turning out to be bad?!? And his children's' behavior? To both, the most simple answer: NO WAY ON
EARTH!!! And frankly, if our dear Stud Muffin was to marry, he certainly would not marry such a
snooty woman. Gawdalmighty!!!! Pray, don't mention that odious woman's name!!!

To wit:
1)  Austen wrote that Elizabeth's father delighted in visiting Pemberley, " especially when "he was least expected."  Ms Tennant killed him off before he or anyone else in the family could visit Pemberley!

2)  Ms Tennant has Lydia and Wickham at Pemberley for Christmas, and again Austen herself said that SHE was occasionally a visitor there, but that Darcy would never let Wickham into the house.

3)  In Elizabeth's letter to her Aunt Gardiner, she invites her and her Uncle to come stay at Pemberley at Christmas, but Ms Tennant has them there at Christmas, but staying at an Inn!

There were many other problems and conflicts with this book, though others have pointed them out far better than I can!

Let me tell you something about Emma Tennant. For some years she edited the work of a very famous postmodern English author, Angela Carter. Carter loves to rewrite fairly tales; her fairly tales are told with physical side of love, with violence, with horror, but, still, they are told in such way that they will bring out the same lesson as the original fairy tales do. When I real Tennant's sequel, I always wonder if she gets too much influence from Carter.

In Pemberley, I feel that Tennant rewrite the lesson in Pride and Prejudice that we, as the readers, should learn. I feel that the suffer which Elizabeth and Darcy feel in Pride and Prejudice is too great that I have no doubt they should at least learn something! So, in my opinion, trying to rewrite Pride and Prejudice should not and would never work in a sequel of Pride and Prejudice: Elizabeth and Darcy should have a new lesson to learn should there be a sequel of Pride and Prejudice!

I don't like Pemberley; in fact, I hate the book.

I am most excessively displeased!

This book is unfaithful to the events of P&P, it does violence to the characters that we all love so much, and it has elements that are ludicrous in the extreme.

Let's just start with Tennant killing off Mr. Bennet at the beginning. That killed off a good portion of my goodwill for the author.  The subplot with Colonel Kitchener is a sad substitute for what it would be like to see Mr. Bennet interact with the likes of Lady Catherine.

What disappointed me most was the incredible, insulting plot turn when Elizabeth runs away to become a governess.  This is not my Elizabeth.  My Elizabeth is strong, funny, loving, and does not fall into despair, even when she makes the greatest mistakes.

What a shoddily executed resolution.  In the last six pages -- Jane is dying! Elizabeth rushes to her!  It's not Darcy's love child, it's Bingley's! E. falls down the stairs--wait--no, she'll recover!  Darcy still loves her!  Jane miraculously recovers!  Yay!  Everybody's having babies!  And they all live happily ever after!

In my opinion, Elizabeth, et al would have lived much more happily ever after if Tennant had left them alone.

Thank goodness for the Bits of Ivory board.

She does the strangest things with time. Somehow Lydia manages to have 4 kids, Jane has 1 + another, and Lizzy has only been married a year ! Excuse my ignorance, but JA's girls don't usually have long engagements, especially where finance is no problem, so why does Lizzy keep Darcy hanging  for several years - as if you would!

The personalities of her characters bear no relationship to the original - except that their previous failings and faults are magnified. JA's characters grow and mature through the novels, Emma Tennant's display a childishness that would make a 14 year old schoolgirl blush. If anyone out there has not read her books, my advice is - don't bother !

For the rest, both novels, which appear to have been churned out at speed, seem not to have anything to do with the characters Jane Austen created so lovingly and developed over so many years, Elizabeth and Darcy behave like characters out of Dynasty or Days of our Lives! For goodness sake, Darcy after his total reclamation in Pride and Prejudice,  reverts like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde into a terrible, arrogant cold hearted caricature. As for Lizzie, my favourite woman in all fiction, she has gone completely crazy- allowing herself to be flattered by some nit wit and imagining, like some silly creature in a Mills and Boon novel, that her husband has been unfaithful and even accuses him of producing an illegitimate son!!!

It is difficult to believe that the author has spent even a day studying the characters she so conveniently takes over.

I just read my first Austen sequel (apart from a few pieces of fan fiction on the Internet) and went to your sequel page to see if I was the only one who dislikes Emma Tennant's Pemberley. I am not surprised that I was not!

The book was worse than I expected. To compare it to Mills&Boon is an insult to that publishing company. I have read plenty of Mills & Boon/Harlequin books, and they are cheap trash, but at least they don't pretend to be anything else, and they do not capitalize on the name of a great author. And they are consistent within the frame of the novel, unlike Pemberley. And they have plenty of action and interaction between the heroine and the hero, unlike Pemberley where the author gives Elizabeth this repeated and endless inner monologue instead of talking to Darcy. I can see how the plots depends on not allowing the two to meet and sort things out, but Elizabeth's anxious and repeated "oh no, he doesn't love me and I am not a good wife" is just so boring and un-Lizzy-like! As for Darcy, he is just proud, romantic, misunderstood and absent in another room or another town throughout the story. We never really meet him in this book.

Others have pointed out the many errors, here are just a few that I noticed:
Lady Catherine has always arranged the New Year's ball at Pemberley, yet at the same time she has a tradition of giving a New Year's party at Rosings!
Darcy and Miss Bingley have been seen in the company of an opera singer in London! Would one of the superiour sisters really associate with a women who appears on the stage, even for the sake of being closer to Mr. D?
Lady C writes letters to Mr. D where she says she wish not to interfere. As if she would ever see her valuable advice as the interference and bullying it is.
And why does Lady C not protest when  Mary Bennet marries the tiresome cousin - and why on earth is he called "Master" Whatshisname, as if he was a little boy?

Oh, I feel so much better after ranting! And yes, this is meant for publication on your "comments" page, if you would like it.

It read like a gothic romance that Austen so successfully satirized in Northanger Abbey. It reduced Lizzie to an idiot (similar to secretaries in Mills and Boon today) and Darcy to the token male. I kept on expecting references to virile chest hair to pop  up.  The inconsistencies were glaring, the climax obscene. There are sub plots (Mrs Bennet's would be suitor, Roper etc.) to a plot that is weak in the extreme. Lydia appeared to have dropped triplets, Lady Catherine to have forgotten her rigid adherence to social rules (as if she would leave the table before her hostess did) and Caroline  and Mrs. Hurst to have lost their barbed comments to outright insolence.

It all hung on  Elizabeth's premise that she's barren. The Elizabeth that we know would have been too intelligent to worry about the fact that one year of marriage has produced no heir. Elizabeth says that she is too modern for Mr. Darcy, yet here she is succumbing to the fears that were prevalent for the queens of the middle ages. Did the so-called author get her time lines mixed up? She has read P&P, the text is peppered with references, but seems to have missed its essence. And what is unforgivable, it is not an intelligent piece of work. My final word is that Pemberley brings a whole new meaning to the term 'pulp fiction'. Only, not so  good.

NOTE: If you submitted this review, please send me, Linda,  your name so that it can properly be attributed.  Thanks.

Of course, there are the usual woes of Lizzy and Darcy and Jane and Bingley, but it is faithful to them in the best way possible. I think that  you would do yourself a favor by picking this book up. 

• Georgiana's meant to be shy, but here it makes out she's shallow.
• As someone said before me, sequels written by other authors are not as good as the orginals, Like the sequel to Gone with the Wind.
• It suggests in the end chapter of J. Austens P&P that they all live happily ever after. Do they, no we see them figthing in the sequel.
• It says in the last chapter that Mr Bennet was a frequent visitor to Pemberley, in the sequel he'd died bfore you'd even finished the preface.

First of all, it takes so many liberties with the details of the original, highly-acclaimed and very much-loved novel that I often wondered if the author had taken even a cursory look at the Cliff Notes before setting her pen to paper.

The story takes place, for instance, a little less than a year after Elizabeth and Darcy are married. Tennant has Jane already the mother of a one-year-old and closely expecting the arrival of a second child. Simple math tells you that this would be impossible--at least while being faithful to the original novel--since JA had Jane and Elizabeth married from Longbourn church on the same day. The Wickhams have four children--anothermpossibility unless you assume she had quadruplets. Lydia did not marry so long beforeher sisters.

Another glaring error, IMNSHO, is the early "bumping off" of Mr. Bennet. While JA clearly writes that he loved to visit Pemberley often, Tennant has him dying only three months after Lizzy's marraige. She does still have him going there, however, because she says something about his finding the library at Pemberley in a deplorable state of disarray.  (There's another point--if Mr. Darcy couldn't comprehend the neglect of a family library when it came to buying books, would he be able to comprehend the neglect of their care and arrangement?) Since it's unlikely that Mr. Bennet could magically transport himself from  Hertfordshire to Derbyshire and back instantaneously by twitching his nose, this seems pretty impossible too. ;-)

There are many other such errors. One that particularly grated was the repeated reference  to the Netherfield ball as the place where Mr. Darcy snubbed Eliza with the famous, "Not handsome enough to tempt me," remark.

Beyond all this, the sequel plot is so untrue to what I believe is the spirit of the characters that it really rankled. I won't discuss it now. I don't want to do any spoilers. I must say,  however, that it goes against everything that I think JA was trying to convey in her ending. While I realize that this kind of impression is open to many interpretations, I doubt there'd be many people here who would disagree strongly over the ending of P & P.

Has anyone else read this sequel? I'd welcome the chance to discuss it with someone else who's read it. In fact, such discussion is likely to be the only enjoyment I get out of reading the book. ;-)

I wonder that she wanted to write JA sequels. It appeared to me that she had no respect for JA's characters, or her thoroughly satisfying conclusion to the novel.

... the spirit and tone of the book were all wrong; besides that Ms. Tennant doesn't sustain a narrative flow very well, and also doesn't approach capturing JA's style, the worst thing about this book is that it seemed to be reducing the plot and characters to the level of a Harlequin romance novel -- that's what I felt that I was reading. In short, this was not in any way a good book, and I'd be happy to continue to rant about it with anyone else who
 was as appalled as I was.

It's not just that it wasn't like JA. I've read several books that weren't quite there, but they were still cute books. I don't even understand how this one got published.

Anyway, that's my opinion.

She can't even get her facts right, there is no wit, it is coarse, unfunny and totally inconsistent with the characters from P&P.

(1) She has Jane with a one year old child less than a year after the Darcys are married. Now, unless my math is rusty, this would mean she had conceived well before her own marriage, a highly unlikely possibility.

(2) She has the war over at the beginning of the book. One year after the marriage of Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy-according to the most reliable chronologies derived from Pride & Prejudice-- would have been sometime in 1813-well before Waterloo.

(3) She has Lydia with four children "under four"-which, a year after the marriage of Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth, seems a bit much, as she was married only a few months before Elizabeth.

(4) She makes Rowsley (rather than Lambton) the former home of Mrs. Gardiner.

In short, the work could have benefited from some more careful research, and a better writing style.

I'm disappointed, so far, with my readings of a P&P sequel.

She loses all of her independance, unable to ask questions of Darcy that we know only too well she would not have held back from in P&P!! One of the key qualities Darcy mentions in his professions of love for her in the original!

Not too mention she kills off Mr Bennet, tries to remarry Mrs Bennet to a scum-like creature, and turns Georgiana into a little witch!

How Ms Tennant could have been pleased with her adaptation, that so blatantly destroys the wonderful characters I cannot guess!

I feel I should go ahead and warn you that An Unequal Marriage is far worse than Pemberley! Just wait for the scene with Lizzy and Darcy when she returns from Col Fitzwilliam and Lady Sophia's home - you'll know it when you come to it. It's the most atrocious thing ever!! I was absolutely appalled.

The Los Angeles Times said that the "eminetly enjoyable" Pemberley "helps deepen our appreciation of the original novel's aristic achievement."

When I first read this apparent complement, I was puzzled. Honestly I didn't think it was very flattering to the author. I now understand that this was not a complement, but a subtle hint of the horrors contained within the book, a veiled warning to stay away, put the book down, don't buy it, don't read it. Unfortunatly, I did read Pemberley and part of An Unequal Marriage. My appreciation of Austen's artistic achievement is certainly deepened. I agree with whoever said Ms. Tennant's time would be better spent tearing every copy to shreds rather than writing anything ever again.
Thank you for allowing me to vent.

       Written by Marg  (7/3/2005 12:24 p.m.)
Pemberley by Emma Tennant - I need to let off steam

About the best I can say about this drivel is that I borrowed it. No money changed hands.

If you're going to write a sequel, it's reasonable to conclude that the readers will be fans of the original. So it's probably a good idea to get the basic facts right so you don't turn the readers off from page 1.

For example: The Wickhams had four children under four, Jane had a one year old and another on the way, and Elizabeth and Mr Darcy had been married less than a year. So when is this book set?

Mr Bennett visiting Elizabeth when he was least expected as it says in P&P? No - he was killed off soon after the wedding.

The Collinses are expecting their first child. What happened to the "young olive branch" in P&P?

Mr Wickham never visits Pemberley? Except in this book.

Remember the housekeeper at Longbourn called Mrs Moffat? No, neither do I. What happened to Mrs Hill? I can't think of any reason to rename her except sheer laziness.

.... I could go on and on.

No, before I stop, I have to throw in one more. According to THIS book, Mr Darcy tried to stop Mr Bingley from marrying Jane because he thought Mr Bingley had not recovered from his grief at the death of a mysterious and nameless Frenchwoman he had an affair with (an affair which resulted in an equally mysterious and nameless son) and wanted to save Jane from heing unhappy.

It wasn't just that the facts were wrong. The characters were in many cases quite different. Elizabeth reminded me more of the young Mrs De Winter (from Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier) than Miss Elizabeth Bennett of P&P. Who stole her spine, her courage, her brains?

It gets worse. Even if this book had no association with P&P, if the characters were supposed to be new to me, the plot was absolute drivel. Characters get into these strange situations for reasons I couldn't figure out, and then it all sort of dissolves and sorts itself out for equally stupid reasons.

There are so many loose ends - what are the empty deed boxes about? What is going on with Master Roper and how will they get him under control? And Mr Kitchiner - con man or just an opportunist? What is the explanation for Mr Darcy disappearing off to London and not even attempting to contact his wife? Why, if Pemberley is entailed to male heirs, is a De Bourgh relative (ie a relative of Mr Darcy's MOTHER not father) set to inherit Pemberley? - and if there is a logical reason for that, I wonder why this relative and not Col Fitzwilliam's older brother (as a nephew of Lady Anne, as opposed to this "distant cousin")?

It isn't appropriate for the era, either. They are often quite "improper", in a way that goes well beyond character. For example, they are quite out-there about pregnancy. Poor Mrs Bennett, I'm sure she'd never sooner speak of vinegar douches as a way to get a boy (and how did the author manage to miss the point that whatever tricks Mrs B might have tried to get a boy, they didn't work). Or another example, Mrs Hurst making snotty remarks about how high her arches are and trying to convince Elizabeth to show off her feet. Huh?

I could keep going but it's 2am and I need some sleep.

It's badly written rubbish. DO NOT read it. It would be good to shred. The only redeeming bits are the small chunks of text pilfered from the original - and you can go back to the original and read them there instead.

Thank you for letting me vent!

I just finished reading Pemberley audaciously alternatively titled or Pride and Prejudice Continued written by Emma Tennant, which I decree is a total failure given the above noted criteria. Since this author had the temerity to have the alternative title described as P & P continued it would behoove the author to especially avoid discrepancies with JA’s P & P.

Now minor discrepancies can be tolerated. After all for example in Trollope’s six novels of the Palliser series, he has the protagonist having only one daughter in the final novel (The Duke’s Children) whereas in the previous novel (“The Prime Minister”) there are two daughters. Mind you I imagine an embarrassed Trollope could explain away any churlish questions by asserting that he neglected to mention the death of such child as it was not germane to the plots. However the discrepancies between Pemberley and P &P I submit are so startlingly egregious that it makes the book not in the least worthwhile.

The premise of Pemberley is that the Darcy & Elizabeth are celebrating their first Christmas since their marriage of almost one year. Now the time line for P & P is that the novel starts in late September as Bingley takes possession of Netherfield, and essentially ends mid October of the next year with the engagement of Darcy & Elizabeth. Thus for Pemberley to work it would mean Elizabeth and Jane (since P &P intimates they were married on the same day) were to have married in January some three months after Darcy’s second proposal and obviously after the Christmas of the second year of P &P. Although given the way Elizabeth’s letter to her Aunt Gardiner informing the aunt of the engagement is phrased, i.e. “You are all to come to Pemberley at Christmas” might suggest that JA is saying the double marriage occurred before that Christmas. However one can live with the supposed January marriage.

Having thus established such a time line for Pemberley the only thing Tennant gets congruent with P &P is Georgiana’s age. Assuming Georgiana’s birthday to be between January and May then the stated age for her to be 17 in this novel would be correct given that she is 15 at Wickham’s thwarted elopement attempt. But everything else is totally awry. For example Lydia is described as a mother of four (albeit small children). Of course for that to be possible she would have had to have given birth to quadruplets which is not suggested and in any case such quads would be too young to be able to run around on their feet as described in this book.

Jane is described as mother of one year old and is pregnant almost to term for a second child and in fact gives birth during the Christmas in this novel. Mr Bennet is described as having died and Mrs Bennet has been a widow for 9 months. Such premise contradicts JA’s assertions in P & P of suggesting frequent visits by Mr Bennet to Pemberley implying that he survives his daughter’s marriage by a few years at least. The Gardiners are not allowed to Pemberley but are forced to take rented rooms nearby thus rendering Elizabeth’s letter in P & P fraudulent.

The ultimate discrepancy in Pemberley though is the following exchange as Darcy advises Elizabeth that his aunt is coming for Christmas:

“And now I must confess to you,” he said, “for I too have received a letter. Lady Catherine de Bourgh, my aunt, was always accustomed to come to Pemberley for Christmas, with her daughter. You remember Lady Catherine, I have no doubt?’ ‘I do,’ said Elizabeth,…”

To envision such a dialogue to be taken at face value in this sequel demonstrates to me that Ms Tennant must have no clue as to what was the plot of P & P. The novel is simply replete with inconsistencies to P & P and I will not bore you with further examples but suffice it to say as a result I can not recommend it. If prosecution for truth in advertising applied to book titles then Pemberley or Pride and Prejudice Continued would be guilty as sin.