Sunday, September 28, 2008

PRIDE & PREJUDICE crossovers - the Mr. & Mrs. Darcy mysteries

Book four in the Mr. & Mrs. Darcy mystery series by Carrie Bebris is out, The Matters at Mansfield: Or, The Crawford Affair -- a crossover with Jane Austen's Mansfield Park this time.



The time-frame for Pride and Prejudice in Bebris' continuity is about 20 years or so later than it must occur in the Wold Newton Universe (in the WNU P&P must occur Sept. 1792-Late Autumn 1793, so that the married Darcy and Elizabeth can be present at the Wold Newton meteor strike in Dec. 1795).



Forcing the Bebris mysteries backward about 20 years also forces the other Austen novels back ~20 years, which causes some insurmountable chronological issues.Thus, I am using the Austen mega-crossover Old Friends and New Fancies by Sybil G. Brinton (1914) in the main timeline in Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World, and listing the series of crossover mysteries by Bebris in the Alternate Universes Addendum of the book.

2 comments:

Sean Levin said...

OLD FRIENDS AND NEW FANCIES is one of the items I'm ordering with an Amazon.com gift certificate I got for my birthday. I've only read PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, but I'm looking forward to Brinton's book and eventually perusing the rest of Austen's works. I have read the first Mr. and Mrs. Darcy Mystery, though...not great, but not completely horrible either. Your point about the chronological difficulties is well-made.

Win Scott Eckert said...

Hey Sean, very cool that you're getting into Austen. And Happy Birthday!