WERE THERE OTHER AUSTEN FANFICTION BOOKS OUT THERE? YES, AS IT TURNS OUT. THOUSANDS. THE QUESTION WAS—WHY?
My first introduction to Jane Austen fanfiction was PD James’ Death Comes to Pemberley. I read the book, watched the television miniseries, and though I am a fan of the author’s work, this particular project left me unsatisfied.
Death Comes to Pemberley cast 2013, image credited to PBS
As a result, I began to wonder. Were there other Austen fanfiction books out there? Yes, as it turns out. Thousands. The question was—why?
Now, I’ve always been interested in literary conversations, including pastiche and adaptations. I wrote about the fictional response to Uncle Tom’s Cabin in graduate school before I even had the vocabulary to call it fanfiction. The Wide Sargasso Sea, Grendel, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead all take minor characters from classic literature and give them stories of their own. Alexandre Dumas cheerfully explains in the preface to the first edition of The Three Musketeers that the titular characters were taken, whole cloth, from Gatien de Courtilz de Sandras’ Mémoires de Monsieur d'Artagnan.
While Jane Austen fanfiction, affectionally termed JAFF, exploded after the BBC’s airing of their 1995 Pride and Prejudice miniseries, the first known JAFF novel was published long before in 1913. That book was Sybil G. Brinton’s Old Friends and New Fancies, which is a nearly perfect description of the motivation to read and write fanfiction.
Fanfiction, then, isn’t new. It’s actually an authorial tradition, a tradition that has been wildly expanded and even professionalized through the auspices of the internet. Authors can now almost effortlessly find readers the world over, and those readers have discovered a treasure trove of free and published stories set in their favorite imaginary worlds and starring their favorite characters.
The reason fanfiction is so popular may rest in the nature of narrative itself. No matter how tightly constructed a structure or plot may be, no matter how deep a character study, there will always exist gaps in the narrative that offer doorways to a wider fictional universe. In that universe, minor characters whose stories remain unknown or are told unsympathetically by the original author are allowed to find their voices, happy coincidences are investigated and turned into “what if” questions whose answers may significantly alter the trajectory of the tale, and those who are not represented at all can write themselves into the narrative.
Image credited to Ginger Monette
Jane Austen was an expert in including only those details which moved her story forward, thus creating a rather large sandbox in which other authors love to play. For example, in Pride and Prejudice, Mr. Darcy’s cousin Colonel Fitzwilliam serves only a few purposes. First, as a fictional second son of the real Earl Fitzwilliam, he links Mr. Darcy to the pro-reform politics of the era. The real earl’s friend and colleague, Lord Holland, claimed Earl Fitzwilliam was powerful due to “his goodness and generosity, and from the combination of gentleness and courage which distinguished his amiable and unpretending character.” Second, Colonel Fitzwilliam appears at Rosings to spill the beans. He tells Elizabeth that Mr. Darcy prides himself on saving a friend from an imprudent marriage. She understands, though the colonel does not, that it is Mr. Bingley and her sister Jane who were being referenced, and this knowledge sets the stage for Elizabeth’s angry refusal of Mr. Darcy’s marriage proposal.
That’s it. Colonel Fitzwilliam has now done what was required of him and once the story leaves Rosings, Austen never writes of him again. He’s not mentioned as attending the double wedding, nor is his future explained at the end of the book when the narrator informs us about the lives of Elizabeth’s family. Readers aren’t informed whether he serves in the regular army or the militia. Austen doesn’t even give him a first name.
This is like catnip for a fanfiction writer. Colonel Fitzwilliam’s character is very nearly a blank slate, although for some reason that has been lost to the mists of time, an early fanfiction author assigned Colonel Fitzwilliam the name Richard and now a significant number of fanfiction readers are very, very attached to it.
Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet, 1995 Pride and Prejudice. Image credited to BBC
As for the happy accidents that occur in Austen’s novels, such as Darcy’s unexpected arrival at Pemberley just as Elizabeth and the Gardiners are touring the grounds, or Frederick Wentworth’s seafaring sister and brother-in-law returning to England just in time to lease the Elliot’s ancestral home, or both Frank Churchill and Jane Fairfax having ties to Highbury, yet meeting and becoming engaged far from home? They all provide grist for the “what if” mill. What if Darcy was delayed? What if the Crofts took a house in another county? What if Frank met Emma first? What if, at any juncture of the story, a different decision was made? What might happen then?
This is the result when a writer as adept at her craft as Jane Austen engages an audience as profoundly as she has done. Readers love those worlds so much that they want to experience them again and again--and they want that world to expand, to include them. There are many JAFF novels that do so. Among them are stories which depict Darcy on the autism spectrum, Elizabeth with lupus or a heart condition, the pair of them as star-crossed interracial lovers, and secondary or original characters whose sexuality is something they must hide.
Because Austen died at 41 with several writing projects unfinished, we have been gifted with only six finished novels and fragments of a few more. Whether taking up the pen to write a new tale or offering comments and critique for those who do, fanfiction communities are building out the worlds that were silenced with Austen’s passing. In so doing, fanfiction can and often does serve as a sort of organic literacy training. Writers voluntarily draft, revise, receive immediate feedback from readers, and revise their stories again, all while discussing structure, plot, characterization, and mundane topics such as grammar and punctuation. Fanfiction creates collaborations between readers and writers with one simple purpose—creating a new narrative.
Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. Penguin, 1813.
©️Melanie Rachel 2022. Melanie Rachel is a university professor and author of Austeneque novels. She first read Jane Austen’s novels as a girl at summer camp and will always associate them with starry skies and reading by flashlight. She currently makes her home in Arizona, where she resides with her husband and their incredibly bossy Jack Russell Terrier. You can find her at Melanie Rachel Author.
JANE AUSTEN REGENCY WEEK
18th - 26th June 2022
The Jane Austen Literacy Foundation hosts events annually at Jane Austen Regency Week, a 9 day festival held in Chawton and neighbouring Alton, Hampshire (UK), each June.
Meet Caroline and our volunteers (click for information and tickets):
Saturday 18th at 10am - Alton Regency Day Market
Sunday 19th at 1.30pm - Parade for Literacy
Sunday 19th at 2pm - Jane Austen Regency Picnic
For the full festival program, click HERE
