Mr. Darcy's Daughters : A Novel [Paperback]

Elizabeth Aston (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 8, 2003

Picking up twenty years after Pride and Prejudice left off, Mr. Darcy's Daughters begins in the year 1818. Elizabeth and Darcy have gone to Constantinople, giving us an opportunity to get to know their five daughters, who have left the sheltered surroundings of Pemberley for a few months in London. While the eldest, Letitia, frets and the youngest, Alethea, practices her music, twins Georgina and Belle flirt and frolic their way through parties and balls and Camilla -- levelheaded and independent -- discovers what joys and sorrows the city has to offer an intelligent young woman. Readers will delight in the return of such beloved Austen creations as Elizabeth's old nemesis Caroline Bingley (now Lady Warren), the ever-reliable Gardiners and wayward Aunt Lydia.

Charming, beautifully written and full of societal intrigue and romantic high jinks, Mr. Darcy's Daughters is a tale that would please Austen herself.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This sequel to Pride and Prejudice from first-time novelist Aston reads more like a beach book for historical fiction fans than a literary homage to Austen's masterpiece. The novel is set in 1818, when Mr. and Mrs. Darcy (nee Elizabeth Bennett) have gone on a diplomatic mission to Constantinople and left their five daughters in London with Darcy's cousin Colonel Fitzwilliam and his wife. Bossy Letitia and rebellious Camilla, the two eldest girls at 21 and 19, look forward to London's social whirl; the youngest, 16-year-old Althea, has an opportunity to study voice with an Italian master musician; and 17-year-old twins Georgina and Belle can't wait to flirt and break hearts. But the young country ladies "need to keep their wits well about them" in the city; pitfalls abound, suitors come calling and soon the Darcy girls-especially the mischievous Camilla, who "had too much of a sense of humour, too witty a tongue and too clever a mind"-are raising eyebrows and incurring the censure of some powerful Londoners. Aston attempts to imitate Austen's style, with little success-the prose is stilted and anachronistic ("it would be very fortunate if we were to find a suitable young man for Letitia. To help her get over Tom's loss, you know, and give her thoughts a new direction"). The daughters' personalities are drawn in broad, predictable strokes, and the romantic plot feels contrived and overly drawn out. Despite the curiosity factor, even Austen fans will likely give this a miss, perhaps turning instead to Emma Tennant's superior Austen sequels (Pemberley, etc.).
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

Linda Berdoll author of The Bar Sinister A chess game of love and betrayal.

Julia Barrett author of Jane Austen's Charlotte Imagine poor Mr. Darcy with five marriageable daughters of his own! And in Mr. Darcy's Daughters, Elizabeth Aston has them all at large in dissolute London. Ah, but what a difference! Unlike Jane Austen's Bennet sisters, some twenty years earlier, these young ladies possess both position and money to spare! Aston takes us on a romp through late Regency society.

Joan Aiken author of Jane Fairfax I read [Mr. Darcy's Daughters] in two gulps and greatly enjoyed it...The invented daughters are fun -- prissy Letty, witty Camilla, musical Alethea, the unbridled twins -- and their ups and downs in London society make a lively story.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Touchstone; Original edition (April 8, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743243978
• ISBN-13: 978-0743243971
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (117 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #626,685 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Elizabeth Aston was born in Chile to an impeccably English father and a distinctly un-English Argentine mother. Educated by Benedictine nuns in Calcutta, Fabians in London, and Inklings at Oxford, she's lived in India, England, Malta and Italy.

Her Mountjoy books (originally published by Hodder, and now reissued as ebooks) were inspired by years of living in York, where her son was a chorister at the Minster. They depict the unholy, unquiet, and frequently unseemly goings-on of an imaginary northern cathedral city and its peculiar inhabitants, enhanced with a touch of magic and enchantment - Elizabeth Aston has always been fascinated by what lies just beyond our sight.

Her other books include the bestselling Darcy series - six historical romantic comedies set in the world of Jane Austen, and a contemporary novel, Writing Jane Austen. These were inspired by her love of Jane Austen - her heroes, her heroines and her wicked sense of humour.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Meh..., April 3, 2006

By 

CoffeeGurl - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Mr. Darcy's Daughters : A Novel (Paperback)

Elizabeth Aston is one of the authors on my Jane Austen-sequel TBR pile. I have read two rather disastrous Pride and Prejudice sequels (Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife by Linda Berdoll and Pemberley by Emma Tennant) and one that I thought was good in a keeping-the-plot-neat-and-safe sort of way (Presumption by Julia Barrett) and I have to admit that I was wary of reading another one of these sequels again. Alas, I have already bought them, so I might as well give them a whirl. Mr. Darcy's Daughters is an apropos title for the book because it concentrates on the aforementioned characters and not so much on Darcy and Elizabeth. In fact, Mr. Darcy and Lizzy have to go on a business trip and leave their daughters under the care of Colonel Fitzwilliam and his wife in London. (They also have two boys, but are left under someone else's care.) The girls -- Letty, Camilla, Georgiana, Belle (these two are twins) and Alethia -- see this as an opportunity to have fun and perhaps cause a little mischief now that they are no longer under their parents' watchful eyes. There are some twists throughout the novel.

The novel has its good moments, but it nowhere near stays true to Jane Austen's style. The plot has a been-there-done-that feel to it and the sisters' personalities are not unlike those of the Bennett sisters. There is the witty, intelligent and spirited one (Camilla), there is the beautiful, albeit sensible one (Letty), and Georgiana and Belle are silly and scandalous. Alethia is the bluestocking, more taciturn one of the sisters. So, as you can see, their personalities are like those of Elizabeth, Jane, Kitty, Lydia and Mary. But just because the author made a blatant attempt at recreating the characters from Pride and Prejudice in the form of five new sisters does not mean that these characters are anywhere near as well written or as enjoyable as the ones in Pride and Prejudice. It came across more as a poor carbon copy of the original characters. And the subplots centered on sex scandals and premarital affairs did not sit well with me. It was almost as though the author wanted to write a typical Regency romance novel using Jane Austen's name for good measure. I have no problem with those sorts of plots, but if the author is trying to buy the reader into this being a P&P sequel... well, it nowhere near does the original justice and you're left with an icky taste in your mouth. And there are quite a few inconsistencies here as well. The original P&P characters used here don't sound anything like the ones Austen created. Sigh. Should I bother continuing to read these sequels? I have heard that An Assembly Such as This by Pamela Aidan is good. I hope that one will be a winner. As for this one, I guess it makes an okay Regency romance book (which I'm not pleased with because I pick this up hoping it'll be a "meatier" companion to my "escapist" read), but not a very great Jane Austen continuation.

32 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Better than a great many P&P sequels, July 19, 2003

By 

J. Garlen "coolcatjuniper" (HUNTSVILLE, AL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Mr. Darcy's Daughters : A Novel (Paperback)

Having slogged through most of the modern Pride and Prejudice sequels for an academic project, I was pleased to find that Aston's newest contribution to the crowd of such books is a good read with a new take on the familiar story. Strictly speaking, Aston's book isn't exactly a sequel, since its main characters are all original creations, but a few of Austen's characters -- like Lydia Bennet Wickham and Caroline Bingley -- make solid appearances.

Aston's prose may not be particularly deep, but her economical approach is better than the grotesque floral excesses of many Austen imitators, and the plot moves along very entertainingly indeed. My biggest quarrel with the novel is Aston's treatment of Colonel Fitzwilliam as the stuffy, repressive patriarch, but somebody had to take the job in order to complicate Aston's romantic plots.

None of the sequel writers has come close to Austen for skill and wit, but Aston's book is fun and well-written, and you can certainly read much worse when it comes to Pride and Prejudice sequels. I would definitely recommend it over the Baders' awful novels and Linda Berdoll's ridiculously lewd The Bar Sinister. If you like Austen spin-offs or historical and romantic fiction, then Mr. Darcy's Daughters makes a lovely weekend read or beach book.

24 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Jane Austen would roll over in her grave, February 7, 2006

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EMC "book lover" (Georgia, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mr. Darcy's Daughters : A Novel (Paperback)

First let me say - its not a totally bad book. Its kind of entertaining and page turning. It did keep me engaged. I guess if what you like about Jane Austen is the balls, and the gowns, and the drinking tea - you will enjoy it. It reads like a decent regency romance...

If you love Austens characters and her light witty touch on relationships between women and men and romance....I think it will be disappointing. It was to me...

My main problem with it was that it was so tasteless, and the characters had very crude behaviour, it didnt ring true to Austen at all. It was a bit like Paris Hilton meets Jane Austen.

You can expect premarital sex. You can expect affairs. Heck you can even expect Caroline Bingley thinking that if she were a man, she probably would have enjoyed catting around brothels. And maybe if it were a satire this could have been funny. But it wasnt.

It felt more like Dangerous Liasons than Jane Austen. I suppose the author did her research and felt this is how people really behave in 1830 London. She thought it would be an amusing new take on an old subject.

It didnt work for me. The daughters were SO unlikeable, it was hard for a fan of P&P to believe that the Darcys would have such rotten kids! And that Fitzwilliam would be such a crumudgeon. That the Gardiners would have little sense and utterly spoiled kids.

What people love about Jane Austen is her observation of human nature, her slightly flawed heroines, and the humorous way she exposes foibles and human nature with her less likeable characters.

If your looking for something witty and clever and true to the tone of Jane Austen, this is not it. If all you are looking for is a regency romance with plenty of betrothals and balls and weddings, you might enjoy it.