Who Needs Mr Darcy?
Lydia Bennet on the loose
Author: Jean Burnett
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
“Fantastic” (Top 500 Amazon reviewer)
I once heard an agent say that there was no female equivalent of the picaresque novel –those tales of men in former times having adventures everywhere, swashing their buckles and wowing the ladies. There were obvious reasons for this. Women did not get about very much in past eras and their behaviour was circumscribed.
Nevertheless, some were able to defy custom. Leaving aside female pirates and those possibly mythical Amazons, I wanted a heroine from literature. Becky Sharpe from Vanity Fair would not do because by the end of the novel she is middle aged and retiring to Bath. I needed a heroine with longevity –it had to be one of the Bennet sisters. Who else but Lydia? When you make a runaway marriage with an unsuitable man at the age of sixteen, things can only get worse.
And so The Bad Miss Bennet was born, also known as Who Needs Mr Darcy? Having killed off Mr Wickham at Waterloo, I gave Lydia plenty of scope for adventures in various parts of the world, in which she grows older but not a great deal wiser. She follows her hero Lord Byron to Venice, becomes embroiled with a dashing Austrian Count…and eventually… but you need to read the book!
Of course, she continues to annoy Mr Darcy considerably especially when she turns up at Pemberley needing money.
Everyone has an Austen fantasy and this is mine.