It is a truth universally acknowledged that anyone who writes about Pride and Prejudice cannot resist riffing on its deliciously measured opening sentence. Granted, they never improve on the original – nor do the adaptations that have tried to capitalise on its enduring appeal. The only one that comes close is Andrew Davies’s BBC series, although even here Colin Firth’s damp shirt and Elizabeth and Darcy’s closing-credits smooch gave the purists palpitations.
I’d happily name Pride and Prejudice as my favourite novel. Spending the past year studying its forebears (particularly Frances Burney’s fabulous but flawed novels Evelina and Cecilia) has only made me appreciate it more. It’s happy without being mawkish, structured without being sterile and waspish without being arch. And what is the response of the publishing industry to such perfection? A temptation to meddle.
The grande dame of detective fiction™, P D James, is the latest author to commandeer my beloved Lizzie Bennet for her own ends. In the newly published Death Comes to Pemberley, Darcy and Elizabeth have been married six years when “their peace is threatened and old sins and misunderstandings are rekindled on the eve of the annual autumn ball”. Up rocks Lydia Wickham to announce that her no-good husband has been murdered.
Death sentence
I’ll reserve judgement until I get to the end, but at least James begins well. Her opening sentence has enough of the cadence of the original to please the devoted Austen fan without straying into burlesque: “It was generally agreed by the female residents of Meryton that Mr and Mrs Bennet of Longbourn had been fortunate in the disposal in marriage of four of their five daughters.”
If only the same could be said of Seth Grahame-Smith’s effort, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. This was received with hysterical acclaim on its publication in 2009, leading to sequels, spin-offs and whispers about a film adaptation. (Blank-eyed, unthinking, inhuman characters, you say? Finally, a Pride and Prejudice film Keira Knightley will be good in!) It had a spirited go at the first line – “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains” – but honestly, inserting your own prose next to Jane Austen’s is only going to make one of you look bad. “What an excellent father you have, girls!” Mrs Bennet tells her zombie-hunting daughters. “Such joys are scarce since the good Lord saw fit to shut the gates of Hell and doom the dead to walk among us!”
The ultimate liberty taken with Lizzie, however, must be in Mitzi Szereto’s Pride and Prejudice: Hidden Lusts, which describes itself as a “reimagined red-hot Regency romance”. I don’t want to steam up your magazine by quoting from it, but suffice it to say that it’s the type of erotic novel that uses the word “manhood”. I’m extremely proud to be prejudiced against it.
P D James’s “Death Comes to Pemberley” is published by Faber & Faber (£18.99)
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