— To Lovers of Jane Austen’s Novels —
The Austenite (sometimes called a Janeite) is always wishing there were more Austen. The
Austenite reads the six published novels many times over, and the unfinished novels, and the juvenilia, and the letters, and the biographies. Then starvation
sets in.
There is, of course, something to be gleaned from the pseudo-sequels, depending
on the intensity of the deprivation; then from the cinematic adaptations, and
from films that borrow themes or plots from Austen, and from the novels and
films of Austen’s life itself; and then from the handbooks and the literary-critical essays. But
resorting to these, even though some are wonderful attempts in themselves, is
like subsisting on gruel after feasting on nutritious food: Use the stuff, but
only if you must do so to survive.
The fact is that there simply is no such thing as more Jane.
But what if there were a novel that was not about Jane or about any of her characters but
still caught some of the elusive elements of what Austenites love about Jane
Austen’s books?
It would have to be written by an Austenite. It would have to be romantic and
yet realistic; it would have to be ingenuous and yet satirical. It would have
to be set in Austen’s era. But it need not pretend to be Jane. It would have license to be different
from Jane.
That is the balance that is so difficult to achieve: being like Jane without clumsily aping Jane.
After all, a gift received should be given onwards; and what Jane gave us ought
to be given again, in a new form, so far as it lies in our power to give it.
In this spirit, Mermaid Press of Maine presents
 |
England, 1814
Edmund Percy has been driven from the hurricane-haunted seas of the Caribbean to
the heart of England’s tranquil Hampshire in search of the Dark Queen foretold to him. He must
unriddle the taunting mystery of her past, if he can; and he must use that
discovered secret to win her with his most silver persuasions. It seems that
all his efforts avail nothing, and the days and minutes allotted to his quest
race away. Then fate or Providence slips a last chance into his hand . . .
An epic, a romance, and a mystery, Edmund Persuader is the tale of a man both
blessed and cursed by his powers of persuasion. Those powers seem to perform
the greatest wonders when they work him ill, yet fail when he needs them most—until he can emerge from the depths of moral error and climb toward the
exaltation of redeeming love.
By the author of Tales of Arcadia.
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