Pride and Prejudice is Jane Austen’s most beloved book. After you finish watching the miniseries on PBS, you might want to check out other authors’ version or continuations of the famous story. We have a list of at least 37 books that take Pride and Prejudice as a starting point. We won’t list them all here, but if you are interested, stop by the reference desk at the Fairborn Library and ask to see it. Here are a few that the Greene County Public Library owns, why don’t you put one of these on request?

An Assembly Such as This: A Novel of Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman, by Pamela Aidan. - This book tells the story of Pride and Prejudice but from the standpoint of Mr. Darcy. So much about him is mysterious, this may help to clear things up. Pamela Aidan has written a trilogy (this is the first) which continue the story of Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy. The others are Duty and Desire and These Three Remain.

Linda Berdoll picks up where Pride and Prejudice leaves off. This rather spicy rendition shows just how much love exists between Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy. Not quite to everyone’s taste, this book is definitely not written by Jane Austen! If you enjoy it, though, Berdoll has written another, Darcy & Elizabeth: Nights and Days at Pemberley.

One of the foremost adapters of Austen’s novels is Joan Aiken. In Lady Catherine’s Necklace, Aiken gives us a story about Rosings, Lady Catherine and Lady Catherine’s daughter Anne.

Since the middle of January, PBS has been showing movies based on the novels of Jane Austen on Masterpiece - Sundays at 9pm. The Complete Jane Austen series will continue until April. The Greene County Public Library carries all of Jane’s books, so if you’re inspired to read Persuasion for the first time after seeing the movie or if you want to read Pride & Prejudice again before PBS broadcasts it, stop into the library to check one out. Jane Austen’s books (in the order being shown by PBS) are:

Persuasion (Jan. 13)

Northanger Abbey (Jan. 20)

Mansfield Park (Jan. 27)

Pride and Prejudice (Feb. 10, 17, & 24)

Emma (Mar. 23)

Sense and Sensibility (Mar. 30 & Apr. 6)

We also have the DVDs and VHSs of the movies PBS is showing, so if you missed one (or can’t wait for the next installment of Pride & Prejudice!), you can catch up by borrowing the library’s copy. Click here to see the list of the Jane Austen DVDs the library owns. Here is a link to the VHS editions. You’ll notice the lists don’t just contain the movies being shown on PBS - Jane is so popular a number of different film versions of her novels have been produced. Watch them all and compare the differences!

If you want to know about those beautiful settings in the films, look at the Jane Austen Locations page - it has pictures of the British estates used as scenery as well as their real names. (Just in case you might want to visit someday!)

Just last Sunday, (while many of us watched the Giants beat the Patriots) PBS showed a new biopic of Jane Austen’s life to go along with their broadcast of all six of Jane’s novels. While the library doesn’t have that particular movie just yet, we do have a number of other biographies about Jane Austen, both book and video. Here are a few to get you started:

Jane Austen, by Carol Shields. Viking, 2001.

Jane Austen, an A&E biography.

Jane and Her Gentlemen: Jane Austen and the Men in Her Life and Novels, by Audrey Hawkridge. Peter Owen, 2000.

Jane Austen: A Life, by Clair Tomalin. Alfred A. Knopf, 1997.

The Jane Austen Society of North America is “dedicated to the enjoyment and appreciation of Jane Austen and her writing.” Check out their websitefor news and events - a Dayton area chapter exists, if you’d like to get involved!

To see and understand Jane Austen’s life, there are several websites that can show you pictures and give tours of the house she lived in, the places she visited and the places where her novels were set. Really very cool.