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This Jane Austen blog brings Jane Austen, her novels, and the Regency Period alive through food, dress, social customs, and other 19th C. historical details related to this topic.

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Lost in Austen, A Review of the Movie, Episode 2: Amanda’s Zany Journey Through the Land of Pride and Prejudice Continues »

Old Friends and New Fancies: The First Jane Austen Sequel

September 11, 2008 by Vic

Inquiring Readers, Although SourceBooks came out with Old Friends and New Fancies last summer, we waited to review this first Jane Austen sequel by Sybil Brinton until now. Reviewed by Lady Anne

The only real problem with Jane Austen is that she left us with a paucity of books to read and re-read. Most of us find that our favorites shift and change as we age, and all of us want more to read by our favorite.

Sybil Brinton, an Englishwoman born in the 1870s, was the first to address this problem in her book, Old Friends and New Fancies. First published in 1913, the novel rounds up unmarried characters from Austen’s works and provides cross-novel romantic entanglement. Her main characters are Georgiana Darcy, Colonel Fitzwilliam, and Kitty Bennet, all, of course, from Pride and Prejudice. During the course of several months, living the lifestyle of their class and time, these three meet characters from Austen’s other books. It is great fun to see them in Bath, London, and at the various estates to and from which they all travel. Here’s Lady Catherine de Bourgh, characterizing Persuasion’s Sir Walter Elliot as a “foolish old beau,” (I loved that!) and creating a huge scene in her inimitable style, urged on by Lucy Steele Ferrars and her sister Anne of Sense and Sensibility, still causing trouble by their malicious gossip, aided and abetted by Mr. Yates from Mansfield Park. Well-meaning old Mrs. Jennings, from Sense and Sensibility is still making her tiresome jokes about her young friends’ beaux, and Emma Woodhouse Knightly is still trying to run everyone’s lives for them. She and her husband are now living in London, Highbury being too small a stage for her activities. An inveterate matchmaker (one might have thought she would learn, but we do remember Jane introducing Emma as one who thought very highly of herself), Emma here plays havoc with Kitty Bennet. Kitty is still foolish, mostly interested in balls and clothes, but we have hope that she might mature with grace. She and Georgiana, much the same age and sharing family ties, become confidantes, although certainly they have little in common other than an attractive naval officer, William Price from Mansfield Park. The Darcys are quite concerned about their sister Georgiana, who remains shy and a little withdrawn, but becomes an interesting and thoughtful character as drawn by Brinton, and a more interesting foil for Kitty than Lydia was. Colonel Fitzwilliam, Darcy’s helpful cousin in Pride and Prejudice, meets and falls hard for the enigmatic Mary Crawford of Mansfield Park. Brinton’s Colonel is, perhaps, a little more unsure of himself (being that dreaded phenomenon, a younger son) than I would have made him, but he too gets a thoughtful delineation.

Mother and Child, fashion plate from My Grandmother's Gowns, 1886

Mother and Child, fashion plate from My Grandmother's Gowns, 1886

One of the best things about Old Friends and New Fancies is that Brinton gently maintains the tone of Jane Austen’s voice. The stories unfold in a leisurely pace; these people, generally of the same class and station, would likely meet each other, and the various characters fall in with people with whom they share similar interests. We can recognize that Elizabeth Bennet Darcy and Anne Elliot Wentworth would like each other, and are pleased that Elinor Dashwood Ferrars and her Edward have been given the living near Pemberley. The other characters, in new situations and among their peers, generally act as we would expect them to. We are happy to see Sir Walter get a strong come-uppance and chuckle at Elizabeth Elliot’s latest hope for a wealthy, handsome husband.

Austen is more satiric and sharper in her observations than Brinton; this book is a gentle resolution of several of the unwed finding their happily ever after among characters from the other books. As such, it is a friendly exercise and truer to Jane’s tone and ideals than most of the current Austeniana. While it is not necessary to be knowledgeable about all of Austen’s books to enjoy Old Friends and New Fancies, it does help, and Brinton’s opinions of Austen’s characters can only be understood if you know the originals.

Old Friends and New Fancies, surely a work of love, is the only book written by Sybil Brinton. I enjoyed it thoroughly, and reminded myself that it is long past time that I re-read Mansfield Park.

Little is known about Sybil Grace Brinton herself. The daughter of a wealthy Kidderminster carpet manufacturer, she was born in 1874 at Stourport-on-Severn, Worcestershire, married in 1908, had no children, suffered from poor health all her life, and died in 1928, without writing another book.

John Adey, a genealogist who runs the Stourport-based Family History Research Ltd, could find out little more about her, despite weeks of searching. “There’s no known photograph of her,” he says. “And it’s odd that even now, the family can’t tell you much about her.” – Times Online, Old Friends and New Fancies

About Lady Anne, the reviewer: A confirmed Janeite and co-founder of Janeites on the James (our Jane Austen group), an expert on all things Georgette Heyer and the Regency Era, a lady well read and well bred, Lady Anne is known for her discerning eye for both literature and her breath-taking garments made by a select mantua maker. Cloth’d and coifed, Lady Anne knows few equals, and when she enters a room she is a commanding presence. She is also Ms. Place’s special friend and confidante.

  • Click here to read a review about the second Jane Austen sequel, Pemberley Shades by D.A. Bonavia-Hunt, on Austenprose.

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Posted in Book review, jane austen | Tagged Jane Austen Sequels, My Grandmother's Gowns 1886, Old Friends and New Fancies, SourceBooks, Sybil G.Brinton | 6 Comments

6 Responses

  1. on September 11, 2008 at 13:06 Heather

    I am blown away that we’ve been writing Austen sequels for this long! I was really in the mindset that it was a contemporary hobby. Based on your review, this book seems to capture a lot of Austen’s voice which, I feel, is the failure of most of the sequels.


  2. on September 21, 2008 at 02:45 Evangeline

    I find it so amusing to read about the wild popularity of the Regency era in late Victorian/Edwardian England. What is it about the period that keeps our attention at the expense of other rollicking time periods (like Restoration England, or even Georgian England with Madame Pompadour, Marie Antoinette and our dear own Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire)? I’m planning to blog on it and the short craze for Napoleon in the 1900s when I move my blog to my domain.


  3. on September 26, 2008 at 01:12 Doug

    In response to Evangeline’s question, my feeling is that after the many of the quite explicit, raunchy novels writing with which we’re currently so accustomed these days, some of us turn with relief to the understated, gently ironic prose of Jane Austen, who turns such a searching gaze on the the genteel mammers and customs of gentrified class in which she moved.

    I don’t know that we neglect the Duchess of Devenshire unduly. One keeps coming across her in biographies of her well-known contemporaries, after all.


  4. on July 24, 2009 at 12:25 A history of Jane Austen sequels | Stefanie C Peters

    […] first true sequel, however, appeared in 1913: Sybil G. Brinton’s Old Friends and New Fancies, a sequel to Pride and Prejudice, which has far and away the largest numbers of sequels and is […]


  5. on September 7, 2010 at 19:23 The Austen Tattler: News and Gossip on the Blogosphere « Austenprose

    […] book reviews for the week, Pemberley Shades one & two, Old Friends and New Fancies, The Pemberley Chronicles, and Essential Austen, keep us reading and […]


  6. on September 19, 2011 at 10:28 Sara

    Hi, my name is Sara, and i start to read Sense and Sensibility

    Hi everybody
    Sara



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