The Bad Jane Austen Novel Project

Bad Jane Austen novel? Don't worry, it's not one of hers. Long story short: sometime in highschool I discovered the emerging cottage industry of sequels to Pride and Prejudice. I read a lot of them. Just about all of them suck.

I'm sure the people who write them are nice and love Jane Austen! But their books are terrible, and they are terrible in a few predictable and troubling ways that I've spent a lot of time thinking about.

In the spirit of spending less time boring my significant other with my thoughts about Jane Austen sequels and what-they-mean-for-literature-and-feminism, I'm going to bore the internet at large!

Starting today, I'm going to review the first Professional Austen Sequel I read (and uh, purchased): Linda Berdoll's infamous non-classic Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife. It's going to be great! Prepare for purple prose, the two most articulate and intelligent characters in English literature acting like stupid assholes, and more euphemisms for the male anatomy than you can shake a stick at (if you know what I mean).