r/JaneAustenFF

Elizabeth Bennet has an... interesting talent when she paints... And Mr. Darcy wants someone to paint Georgiana's portrait, but Miss Bennet refuses.
A fascinating variation with a touch of the paranormal.

Lizzy's Curious Talent

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https://www.audible.com/pd/Lizzys-Curious-Talent-Audiobook/B0GXLDQPRX?source_code=AUDFPWS0223189MWU-BK-ACX0-508600&ref=acx_bty_BK_ACX0_508600_pd_us

I just re-read the one where Elizabeth treats Darcy like the feral tomcat she adopted when she was young and there's a new one where Mrs Bennet comes up with a regency version of love is blind.

I am having a hard time and would love something lighthearted and funny to read. AO3 preferred because fanfic.net makes my eyes cross and I have no budget for real books.

There's a FF I read long ago about Georgiana and Caroline plotting against Elizabeth. Darcy thinks she's cheating on him and sent her away.

Elizabeth scaped thanks to her maid to Scotland.

I remember she is already pregnant and gave birth to twins but only the girl survive.

Hi! I’m after stories where Jane is given a bit of a reality check after her wedding. A lot of fics have her and Bingley as basically the Disney blissful happy ending, and I’d like stories about Jane realising the world isn’t actually as good as she thinks. Bonus points if *Bingley* is also not quite the Prince Charming she thinks he is!

I’ve seen it in the background of a few fics (for example, references to anything from Bingley having an affair to her being kidnapped) but I’d like to know if any stories have it as the main plot.

I’m fine with angst and mature content.

Thanks!

Looking for recs (preferably KU) where Jane and Bingley don’t end up together. It doesn’t have to be the primary story, but maybe she is turned off by how easily he was swayed, or she never really loved him and felt obligated to encourage him for sake of Mrs. Bennet. I like the idea of Jane with more of a backbone.

It’s been a few years since I came across this fic where Darcy teaches Elizabeth to fence in his London house. I think the ballroom is used as a salle.

for me:

Movie: I love the musical Bride and Prejudice. I thought the choice of modern India made a logical sense. and it was just a lot of fun.

book: Pride and prejudice and zombies- movie wasn’t nearly as good. And I didn’t care for the others by same publisher later.

Read any recently-posted works you'd recommend? Let's discuss here!

I'm looking for a variation where Elizabeth lives with Mr. Gardiner and helps with the kids after Mrs. Gardiner passes away. I'm pretty sure that it's not "Stench of Trade".

Thank you!

Hi, all! I'm a culture writer and a long time Austenite, working on an article about the great fanfic schism that happened in the Jane Austen fandom way back in 1998, when the Derbyshire Writers Guild was created as a way of removing all the fic that was deemed "non-canonical" from the Republic of Pemberley.

I'm looking to speak to anyone else who was there during that period and remembers that era! If that's you, or you know someone who might want to chat, please shoot me a DM!

Thank you!

It has long been a truth universally acknowledged that a scholarly, studious, or socially awkward young woman must be transformed before she can woo suitors into asking her to prom. From Olivia Newton-John’s Sandy in “Grease” to the late-’90s teen classic “She’s All That,” the glasses must be tossed aside in lieu of contacts. The hair must come down. The sensible shoes must be replaced with six-inch, red-bottomed stilettos. Only then may she be presented to the world as beautiful, desirable, and worthy of male attention.

This familiar glow-up trope is cleverly resisted in the BBC’s adaptation (available for streaming on Amazon Prime) of Janice Hadlow’s “The Other Bennet Sister,” an imagined parallel life for Jane Austen’s most overlooked Bennet daughter, Mary. The series is not an imitation of Austen, nor does it presume to tell us what Austen really intended for her most solemn and least celebrated sister. Rather, it imagines how Mary might have found her own way through the unforgiving constraints of Regency society after a lifetime of being treated as the family disappointment. As a lover of Austen’s novels, I suspect she herself would have enjoyed it; I don’t think there can be a higher compliment.

In Austen’s original novel, Mary Bennet is remembered as little more than the pious and pedantic middle sister who meanders feebly at the piano and lacks the beauty or wit of her sisters. The BBC’s adaptation begins with that familiar figure but asks what sort of inner life might exist beneath the awkwardness.

Portrayed charmingly by Ella Bruccoleri, Mary is curious, earnest, bookish, and she is content to spend her leisure consuming tomes of nonfiction: geology, history, and whatever other volumes might shield her from a world in which she has never quite belonged. Eventually, she moves to London to live with her aunt, Mrs. Gardiner, played by Indira Varma, with precisely the sort of benevolent wisdom Austen gives her in the novel. There, Mary works as a governess and begins, at last, to grow beyond the cramped emotional confines of her trying mother’s nest.

Even Penelope Featherington, in her season of “Bridgerton,” had her hair redone in flattering curls and traded her pastel dresses for a more alluring and seductive silhouette before Colin Bridgerton finally gave her the time of day. “The Other Bennet Sister” takes a gentler and more interesting route.

A pivotal moment comes when Mrs. Gardiner takes Mary to the haberdashery and encourages her to design her own dress. Mary, having slowly mustered some confidence, channels all her wallflower eccentricity into a design she dreams up herself, blissfully indifferent to the fashions contouring society gatherings. The point is not that she will turn every head at the next masquerade ball. It is that the dress is distinctly hers, and she is not shy about it. Mrs. Gardiner does not drag Mary from her mother’s influence merely to place her in the orbit of a future husband. She gives her the freedom to develop taste, preference, and judgment of her own.

It is here that the series triumphs. Romance still matters — this is still the Jane Austen Cinematic Universe — but it is not pursued as a means to an end. Before Mary can be loved properly, she must first accept that happiness is not a privilege reserved for conventionally comelier girls. “Our happiness is in our own hands,” Mr. Collins, strongly cast here as Ryan Sampson, tells her in a poignant scene, and Mary takes the lesson to heart.

Only once she begins to believe this do suitors of substance begin to recognize her. Midway through the series, she encounters William Ryder, played by Laurie Davidson, a kind of Regency bohemian who introduces her to the idea of indulging her impulses. He is charming, unconventional, and exactly the sort of figure who might tempt a woman like Mary into mistaking libertinism for liberation. But it is ardent romantic Tom Hayward, played with endearing conviction by Dónal Finn, who truly appreciates Mary as she is.

That balance is what makes the adaptation work. Mary is not transformed into a spectacled facsimile of Elizabeth Bennet. Nor is she grafted onto some feminist iconoclast, misunderstood only because the world was too cruel to appreciate her brilliance. She remains awkward, self-serious, and frequently absurd.

In that sense, “The Other Bennet Sister” succeeds because it does not flatter its heroine by pretending she was perfect all along. It insists that imperfection is not the same thing as unworthiness. Mary Bennet does not need a makeover. She needs room to make her own choices, occasionally err, and be loved without becoming someone else.

It is not the conventional conceit of Jane Austen’s novels, but if the author of “Persuasion” and “Pride and Prejudice” were around today, I believe she would approve. The series speaks to contemporary anxieties about self-worth and reinvention while remaining close enough to Austen’s moral universe to feel like a contemporary continuation. In a culture fixated on superficial perfection — from gratuitous Botox injections to whatever deranged absurdities “LooksMaxing” entails — “The Other Bennet Sister” offers the more compelling proposition that Mary Bennet did not lack beauty so much as the freedom and confidence to become herself.

As the title suggests, I’m looking for stories where the main focus is on Mr. Bingley and Jane, set in Regency England, with both of them characterised as in canon?

hi!! i was literally just starting a pride and prejudice ff on ao3 and i clicked to go to the next chapter and it disappeared....i'm hoping it was a mistake on my end and the author didn't delete it!

it was a retelling where the bennets were indian. i only read the first chapter so i really don't have much more info....mrs.bennet called lizzie "dark and coarse" while jane was fairer. mr. bennet's first name was edward.

I can't remember who it was (maybe Georgiana) was out at the theatre with their family as a special treat and they got separated in the crowd. They ended up overwhelmed by the people and the heat and being lost and started to have what modern audiences would describe as a panic attack.

I believe it is Lizzie who finds her (having already been introduced) while out with the Gardiners and they bring her back to their rented box, having her send a note to her family at their box so they know where to find her.

Does this scene sound familiar to anyone else? )(I'm specifically collecting "theatre" scenes to reread for setting reference, so if anyone has any other stories that feature theatre scenes I'd appreciate the rec, even if it's not this specific sense))

Just as it says on the title! Not sure if I remember it exactly, but I’m pretty sure the soulmate mark of Elizabeth was Pemberley or at least a part of it across her back. I don’t remember Darcy’s tho and I don’t remember anything else on the story :(

Hey! I'm looking for variations where Elizabeth (her father) is titled and meets Darcy in the London season. I don't mean the stories where it's revealed later on that Elizabeth is not actually a Bennet. Would really appreciate names or links of such variations.

Any good fanfics that are arranged marriage or marriage of convenience for Elizabeth and Darcy? Thanks!

Looking for a FanFic I read long ago and can't remember the name. Darcy is a second son and the Gardiners introduced him to Elizabeth.

His brother never had children so the eldest son of Darcy and Elizabeth became the heir of Pemberley.

Lady Anne is still alive.

Looking for a fic where Mr Darcy finds an article in the papers talking about how Darcy is Miss Bingley's "particular friend" and asking when will the engagement be? When he confronts the Bingleys, Caroline is all, "Oh gosh, can't imagine who would post that, but now my reputation is compromised" and then says, "So when should we wed?" And Darcy is angry and refuses to summit to this.

The article was basically Miss Bingley's fault because she kept going to events and referring to herself as Mr Darcy's "particular friend"

I believe it was something in KU and not in a fanfic site but not 100% positive.

It is not:

A Heart's Secret by Ali Scott

Mr. Darcy and the Mysterious Miss B by Juliana Abbott

Bingley’s Blunder, or The High Fine Art of Gossip by Suzanne O.