Misplaced Manuscripts

Another tack authors take when re-imagining Austen is to imagine new parts of her world. The three books in this section create a kind of alternate reality, imagining “real” books that could exist within the world of Pride and Prejudice: the lost diaries of Elizabeth and Darcy, and Darcy’s own “guide to courtship.” These books are pretending to be actual books that Darcy or Elizabeth might have written, so they’re especially creative in format. The diaries allude to physical handwriting on their covers.

Mr. Darcy’s Guide to Courtship constantly alludes to its place within the world of Austen’s book. It features a dedication to Darcy’s friend Mr. Bingley: “May this cure you once and for all of your utterly disastrous taste in females.” Several other imagined works are embedded within the book, including an epistle by Mr. Wickham on “The chief arts of seduction, compiled by a notorious philanderer … at the particular request of Lord Byron.”

Lord Byron, of course, was a real person living during the period of Pride and Prejudice. By mixing Austen’s fictional world with the real one, Emily Brand makes it even easier to imagine these texts as published books that might have existed.

This treatise by “Mr. Wickham,” seen below, even has an imagined date of printing. It’s 1805, before the publication of Pride and Prejudice.

In this spread from Mr. Darcy's Guide to Courtship, Mr. Wickham shares his thoughts on "The Art of Seduction."

While The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet sets itself in a modern-day Pride and Prejudice, The Private Diary of Mr. Darcy locates itself in the nineteenth century. Both, however, emphasize the materiality of the documents they imagine. Lizzie’s account does this through the image of the journal on its cover, and Darcy’s does this through the handwritten title on a sheaf of papers.

All of these texts claim to be a physical part of the world of Pride and Prejudice. In doing so, they’re not just imagining Austen’s world—they’re rewriting its physical realities. They also make an interesting claim at originality: Who’s to say a story that comes straight from Elizabeth or Darcy isn’t more immediate, and more real, than Austen’s?