Inspired by a need to understand the market, and my potential readers, I’ve recently embarked on a different kind of Jane Austen Project: reading more widely wildly a thing I’d been largely avoiding until now, out of fear it would either make it me give up in despair or unintentionally become a plagiarist: fiction inspired by Jane Austen.

So far, I am left with one overwhelming impression: astonishment at the iron hold that Mr. Darcy (specifically, as depicted by Colin Firth in the 1995 A&E film version) has left on the imagination of the producers, and, one can only suppose, the consumers of this kind of fiction. I’ve joked about the wet shirt scene

as much as anyone, but I shall do so no longer, for at a certain moment this notion stopped seeming funny to me, and become horrifying. Continue reading →