Cover

Halftitle

Title

Dedication

To

THOSE MOST CONSTANT AND

DEVOTED JANEITES,

THIS WORK IS,

FOR THEIR APPROBATION AND DIVERSION,

MOST RESPECTFULLY

SUBMITTED,

BY THEIR

DUTIFUL

AND OBEDIENT

HUMBLE SERVANT,

THE AUTHOR.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.

BOOK LAY-OUT AND COVER ART: Judy Walker

EDITOR: Robert Lesman; ASST. EDITORS: Michele Middleton and Linda Cirba

RESEARCH ASSISTANTS: Anna Klenkar, Mary Channel, and Nicola Hislop

MENTOR: Jan Neuharth

ERRORS: The Author

FONT: Coldstyle

COMPUTER: 28 years of Apple. Thank you, Steve. Like Jane, you were taken from us long before we were able to let you go. Like Jane, you have added immeasurable joy and enrichment to the lives you too-briefly shared. I know, wherever you are, they are all typing into Macs, talking on iPhones, listening to iPods, dancing to iTunes, and Gabriel is calming the angels in the aftermath of Lion. And, as we all know, there’s no such thing as a Windows-friendly attachment.

This is the place to thank everyone who has been a part of bringing this book out of darkness, and into light. The path has never been direct, has always been long, and largely one of unending questions, leading to yet more research. This book is the product of nothing so much as tenacity, for which I thank my Aunt Doris. She taught me the only lesson better than Nothing is Impossible: that Everything is Possible. They are not the same, and the latter is more powerful than the former.

I wish to acknowledge my debt and gratitude to the many others who have given so generously and graciously of their time, experience, and knowledge: Gillian Dow, Janine Barchas, Gilly Drummond, Jocelyn Harris, Joan Ray, Sarah Kernochan, Barbara Frank, Laurie Kaplan, Len Bosack, Graeme Cottam (a.k.a. Haggerston), Susan Staves, Stephen Lawrence, Elizabeth Garvie Rodgers, Laura Clark, Roger Trilling, Amber Denker, and Juliet McMaster.

Last, but certainly not least, thank you, Jane, for the years of pleasure, escape, inspiration, pithy quotes, guidance, and especially for reminding me that Everything is better with Humour.

VOL. I.

CHAP. 1.

A PERIOD of ten years’ time usually brings many changes, and the Bennet family at Longbourn in the county of Hertfordshire—whilst believing themselves, as families do, to be generally very interesting, and on occasion, extraordinary—was, perhaps to their collective mortification, quite unexceptional. Mr. & Mrs. Bennet and their five daughters, a coachman, a cook, and all of the various servants thought necessary to a large and respectable country family were now reduced to just Mr. Bennet and his youngest daughter but one, Kitty, living in the village manor house with the few attendants who had not retired or followed to the houses of his married daughters. Mrs. Bennet had, alas, been suddenly carried off at Longbourn one particularly nervous afternoon, requiring Mr. Bennet to admit the possibility that her ailments had not been quite imaginary, and consider that he had not actually treated his old friends, Mrs. Bennet’s nerves, with the compassion they merited after all.