Dancing with Mr. Darcy: Stories Inspired by Jane Austen and Chawton House Library
By Sarah Waters
3.5/5
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About this ebook
“What a wonderful collection! Each story is like a little treasure just waiting to be unwrapped, bringing its own unique and engaging perspective to the Austen mythos. A real treat for Jane Austen fans.”
—Syrie James, bestselling author of The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen and Dracula, My Love
Dancing with Mr. Darcy is a sterling collection of short stories inspired by beloved novelist Jane Austen and Chawton House, her longtime home. Edited by Sarah Waters, a bestselling author shortlisted for Great Britain’s Booker Prize, this exceptional anthology features the winning entries in the Jane Austen Short Story Award 2009, a literary competition which celebrates the bicentenary of Jane Austen’s arrival in the village of Chawton, where she spent the most productive years of her writing life. Any reader who’s been captivated by Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, or the other unforgettable excursions into Austen’s literary world will find Dancing with Mr. Darcy an unparalleled delight.
Sarah Waters
Sarah Waters has a Ph.D. in English literature and has been an associate lecturer withthe Open University. She has won a Betty Trask Award, the Somerset Maugham Award, the CWA Ellis Peters Historical Dagger Award, the South Bank Show Award for Literature, and her books have been short-listed for the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, and the Man Booker and Orange prizes. In 2003, she was named Author of the Year three times andwas chosen as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists.
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Reviews for Dancing with Mr. Darcy
53 ratings7 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Reviews of this at LT are quite mediocre, so I didn't expect to like this as much as I did. Twenty short stories, all written by what appears to be British women, that were part of "the Best of the Jane Austen Short Story Competition." All the stories are just a few pages long, and the ties to Jane Austen are loose. As with probably every single collection of short stories, a few were very good, and a few unreadable. Recommended for: For most of these stories, one doesn't need to know a thing about Jane Austen or her novels to read this in order to find enjoyment. Janeites looking for Austen-language stories and Austen fanfic readers will be disappointed. If you're interested in writing that takes its inspiration from former literary works, authors, and places, and then does something completely different, this may be for you. Rating: pleasantly surprised.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A collection of short stories engaging enough to enjoy as you read, but not a book that rivets you to your seat until you are done. Just what I needed
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Note: I received an ARC of Dancing with Mr. Darcy through the Goodreads First Reads program.Dancing with Mr. Darcy is a collection of 20 short stories inspired by Jane Austen and Chawton House, the "best of the Jane Austen short story competition." Sarah Waters is the editor and one of the judges on the panel (there are 4 others). I don't typically read many short stories, but this book made for a fairly quick, enjoyable read; I found that I very much enjoyed the majority of the stories, and there weren't any that I outright disliked. It was a perfect book to read on my commute to and from work (25 minutes on a subway) since the shorter stories lend themselves well to shorter reading sessions. Some of the stories were more obvious in their connection to Austen, with characters pulled straight from the pages of her books or using Austen herself as the central character, but there were also quite a few with more tangential ties to Austen's work and it was interesting to see the ways in which the different writers were inspired by Jane and her characters. The story that won the grand prize in the competition - "Jane Austen Over the Styx" by Victoria Owens - was my favorite in the collection. It takes the reader along with Jane into Hades, where she is confronted and judged by a panel made up of older female characters from her novels (Mrs. Bennett, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, Mrs. Ferrars, Mrs. Churchill, Lady Russell, and Mrs. Norris). It was clever and entertaining, and a great emulation of Jane's own style of writing. Others that I especially enjoyed: "The Jane Austen Hen Weekend" (about a girls' weekend gone wrong), "Second Thoughts" (in which the writer tries to give us what was going on in Jane's head when Harris Bigg-Wither proposed), and "The Delaford Ladies' Detective Agency" (a great little mystery with Mrs. Edward Ferrars as it's detective).
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- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A rather ho-hum collection of short stories selected by Sarah Waters as the best entries submitted to a competition sponsored by the Chawton House Library in 2009. All the stories were "inspired" by Jane Austen's life, works, home at Chawton, or the Chawton House Library itself. In the winning story, "Jane Austen over the Styx," the author descends into hell, charged with creating older female characters who are either snobs, scolds, harpies, or selfish manipulators--some of whom are there to give testimony. This is perhaps the best of the lot. I was at times at a loss to see the Austen connections in others, such as the fantasy-like "Broken Words." Overall, not a bad collection, but very hit and miss.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dancing With Mr. Darcy is a collection of short stories 'inspired' by Jane Austen, some more obvious than others. It contains twenty tales written by women of all ages, with different perspectives on Jane Austen and her writings.Some stories, the connection to Jane Austen is overt while others were merely noted to be influenced by Jane Austen; I found some to be a stretch for this book. The winner "Jane Austen Over the Styx" was interesting, but I also enjoyed "Eight Years Later", could be because Persuasion is one of my favorites.I am glad I added this book to my JA collection, but I was not overly impressed by many of the stories. Granted it was a fun read but readers who may not be an avid JA fan might not find it as entertaining as those of us who do. I would only recommend to JA addicts like myself...
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Some of the stories stood out in my mind and some just passed by. It does start with a standout one, Jane Austen over the Styx by Victoria Owens entertained me, the idea of Jane being judged by her lesser characters made me smile.Second Thoughts by Elsa A Solender has Jane Austen contemplate her acceptance of marriage.Jayne by Kirst Mitchell is a quite short story about a woman dealing with compromise to get ahead.The Delaford Ladies Detective Agency has a Sense and Sensibility meets Miss Marple meets No 1 Ladies Detective Agency vibe. I enjoyed it.Tears fall on Orkney is a tale of love and understanding, inspired by, not one of my favourites. Eight Years Later is another tale of love lost and found. I didn't care for Broken Words at all.Miss Austen Victorious features an Austen play during World War II England. Cleverclogs tugged at my heartstrings. Snowmelt resonated deeply (I work as a Librarian). The Watershed I found unremarkable, as I did Somewhere. The Oxfam Dress went nowhere and didn't resonate at all. Marianne and Ellie modernised characters and was okay, The Jane Austen Hen Weekend was meh. One Character in Search of her Love Story Role was an interesting exercise but tried too hard to be clever (footnotes, really?). Second Fruits was a nice encapsulated romance. The School Trip was nice and simple. We Need to Talk about Mr Collins, honestly I barely remember, it didn't really resonate at all, likewise with Bina.Overall not a bad set of stories, probably something there for most. None of them made me want to hunt up all the works of the various authors though.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Short stories are not one of my favorite genres, but I couldn't resist adding this collection of Jane Austen-inspired stories to my wish list. One of my friends who shares a love for Jane Austen spotted it there and bought it for me for Christmas. I've been dipping into it one story at a time until I ran out of stories.All of the stories were entered in a Jane Austen short story competition. The panel of judges included well-known novelist Sarah Waters, as well as a descendant of one of Jane Austen's brothers. It must have been difficult to select the winner from the stories included in this collection. There were just three stories that disappointed me, and several that I really liked.My favorites selections:Tears Fall on Orkney by Nancy Saunders. I expect this story of unrequited love will linger the longest in my memory. The understated tone hit me just right.Miss Austen Victorious by Esther Bellamy. A local theatre company rehearses Pride and Prejudice during the Blitz.Cleverclogs by Hilary Spiers. A young reader experiences her first Jane Austen novel.One Character in Search of Her Love Story Role by Felicity Cowie. I was hooked from the first sentence: Hannah Peel was dispatched by her author to shadow heroines from Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre.The variety of writing styles in the collection almost guarantee that every Jane Austen fan will find something to his or her liking. Recommended.