Lessons of Advantage

Jane Austen famously wrote that she had 'lopped and chopped' a large part of her original manuscript of Pride and Prejudice to keep printing costs down. Those lost sections were the inspiration for Lessons of Advantage, which imaginatively expands the final third of Pride and Prejudice into a full length novel that fills in gaps in the story and retells its major events from new perspectives. The author's aim has been to capture the characteristic rhythms of Jane Austen's language while remaining true to her moral and social values. The title comes from something Mr. Darcy says to Elizabeth Bennet: "You taught me a lesson, hard indeed at first, but most advantageous." Elizabeth might have replied that she, too, had learned a hard but advantageous lesson.