From the Austen Canon: 'Pride & Prejudice' & Mary Bennet
A few wonderfully loving heroines & heroes -- and Miss Mary Bennet and Mr. Collins rescued at last.
Earth has not any thing to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!
-Wordsworth
Over the past couple of months, I’ve been filling my mind with versions of Austen’s Pride & Prejudice, and her book itself. My aim has been to compare Austen’s 1813 novel with an unusually good sequel, Janice Hadlow’s The Other Bennet Sister (2020). Both have been made into on-screen masterpieces, first the 1995 BBC Pride & Prejudice series from Andrew Davies, then the 2005 feature film version of Pride & Prejudice, directed by Joe Wright; and now the 2026 series from Sarah Quintrell, The Other Bennet Sister, centering Mary Bennet (Ella Bruccoleri) and her romance with Tom Hayward (Donal Finn). The latter returns to BritBox and the BBC for Christmas 2026 with a three-part special. Across both novels and the three screen adaptations, many unresolved, interacting threads run through these five intertextual works.
Several other intervening texts and films are used, including Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy’s Guide to the Lakes (1835), so I’ve also been reacquainting myself with these.
