Announcing Pride & Prejudice: The Untold Stories!

Hear ye, hear ye! The Austen Variations team has a treat coming up for you! Over the next two years we’re going to be posting untold stories from Pride & Prejudice in real time. That means that next week, 212 years after Bingley first sees Netherfield, we’ll be posting a scene showing that event, and then each of the following events will be portrayed on the same day they happened in the novel. It’ll include scenes that never show up in the original book, plus changes of point of view.  Want to know what Darcy was thinking as he sat silently with Elizabeth in the library? How he tried to forget her when she was in London? What the Gardiners were thinking at Pemberley? This is your chance!

But more than that, it’s a chance to experience the story in real time. To actually feel the brief six weeks of Jane and Bingley’s acquaintance, between their first encounter at the Meryton Assembly and when Bingley leaves after the Netherfield Ball, and then the year of pining afterwards. To experience all the months of Darcy’s separation from Elizabeth before they meet at Pemberley.  To see the very brief engagement before the double wedding. To live within the actual timeline of the story. It gives a different understanding of our beloved book!

We did a similar project some years ago, eventually publishing our efforts as Pride & Prejudice: Behind the Scenes and Persuasion: Behind the Scenes, whose royalties were donated to Jane Austen’s House in Chawton.  It was a huge endeavor, though we all enjoyed it thoroughly. I learned so much from the project! But now we have many new authors who are eager to tell some untold stories of their own, and readers who weren’t here for the experience of following the story in real time, so in a burst of insanity, we decided to do it all again! There will be some scenes from the original version, but also new ones from Lucy Marin, Amy d’Orazio, Elizabeth Adams, Joana Starnes, Nicole Clarkston, Christina Morland, Anngela Schroeder, Monica Fairview, and more!

It’s going to be great fun, and I hope you’ll come back next Monday for the first scene, when I tell about Bingley’s first sight of Netherfield.  Or you can subscribe to our posts, and have all 100+ scenes delivered to your email box – in real time!