PUBLISHING A SEQUEL to Pride and Prejudice seems to excite the same outrage and opprobrium amongst the cognoscenti as painting a moustache on Peale’s portrait of Washington, or, for my English friends, proclaiming that tea is unhealthy. In the centuries that have passed since the publication of what many of us believe is the finest book in the English language, millions of readers have comforted and entertained themselves with their own imagined lives of Mr. and Mrs. Darcys post-P&P. To offer something which varies, even slightly, from these innumerable, unknowable “sequels” requires that one, in Mr. John Knightley’s words, “think well of himself, indeed.” Your humble author begs leave to proffer an alternate explanation.

My love affair with Jane Austen (and no-one who loves her will dispute this metaphor) began in the early 1980s with Masterpiece Theater’s airing of the BBC’s “Pride and Prejudice,” starring Elizabeth Garvie and David Rintoul. This will always be “My P&P,” and any deviation therefrom is heresy. Period. The only possible exception I can allow is “Clueless,” not only because it is a brilliant adaptation that I think would have excessively diverted Jane Austen, but also because it is not a remake of P&P. I am willing to allow liberties with Emma which I am unwilling to countenance with Lizzy and history’s most desirable man.

Nay, dear, gentle readers, my attempt originated from a deep desire for “more Jane.” Like many of you, I am not only miserable that she died when there could have been so much more to love, but remain convinced beyond reason that things did not really end on that dark day in July, 1817. In my homage to Jane and her fictional world, I have spent no less than twenty-six years researching and writing this sequel, founded the Chawton House Library and Centre for the Study of Early English Women’s Writing, and donated the many books I have purchased in my quest to honor Austen and her contemporaries—all bold and intelligent women; it has been a task demanded by love and justice, but one driven equally by my belief that the collection of the literature produced by these women, and an unbiased assessment of this long-ignored subset of English literature, is indispensible to the comprehension of Austen’s life and times, and hence, her legacy. When this context is unavailable or unreconstructed, I believe, we cannot—despite however many re-readings—know even what we do not know.