Quotations Weblog

Pemberley: Or Pride and Prejudice Continued by Emma Tennant was the first Pride and Prejudice sequel I ever read. I bought it back in 1996 during the A&E Pride and Prejudice revival.

I was so eager to hear the continuation of the story and I consumed this book in a day. This book portrays Mr. Darcy as harsh and nearly uncaring, Elizabeth obsessed with whether Mr. Darcy has been untrue to her and the continual bore of Mr. Collins. Of course, Elizabeth must produce an heir. If that was easy for her, the story would be boring, right?

I was disappointed with the book because it felt like Emma Tennant took the easy way out. Elizabeth MUST have trouble bearing Darcy a child. Elizabeth MUST be a jealous wife. Mr. Collins MUST be the bore. And the ending was just as predictable as the problems that Elizabeth must encounter.

Worse still, Emma found an easy way to fill pages by having Mrs. Elizabeth Darcy remember the words of her father and husband. Word for word quotation from Pride and Prejudice accounted for far too much of Ms. Tennant’s own work. The entire book felt like a English thesis paper, in which Emma needed to prove each point she made in her book with quotations citing the original work.

As my first introduction into sequels to Jane Austen’s books, Pemberley had the lucky chance to be the standard by which I held all others. Instead, I just assumed that all sequels to Jane Austen’s books would merely pale in comparison.

Emma Tennant has written many other books that might be of interest:

• An Unequal Marriage: Or Pride and Prejudice Twenty Years Later

• Emma in Love – Jane Austen’s Emma Continued

• Thornfield Hall: Jane Eyre’s Hidden Story

• Heathcliff’s Tale

• Two Women of London: The Strange Case of MS Jekyll and Mrs Hyde