The Longbourn Letters & The Other Bennet Sister
This week the girls continue their discussion on Pride and Prejudice, supplementing their discussion with Rose Servitova's "The Longbourn Letters" and Janice Hadlow's "The Other Bennet Sister”
Topics discussed (while Saoirse's next door neighbour aggressively cuts their hedge and what ever chair Cliodhna is sitting in squeaks obscenely loudly) include:
- Mary Bennet, heroine extraordinaire
- Mr Bennet as a secret leading man
- Why unsympathetic characters become unsymapthetic in the first place, and should we laugh at them?
Additional tangents include:
- The highly improbable existence of the Illuminati
- How Chloe is bearing up without the MOTS7 world tour
- Online gaming with your family like a loser - a la Casa de Flannery
- Katie's hidden past as a Harry Potter fanfic author
Oh it's all VERY exciting gang!
Catch the full episode
More on The Longbourn Letters
Where Pride and Prejudice ends, a new relationship begins. Good-humoured but detached and taciturn, Mr Bennet is not given to intimacy. Largely content with his life at Longbourn, he spends his evenings in the solitude of his library, accompanied only by a glass of port and a good book. But when his cousin, the pompous clergyman Mr Collins, announces his intention to visit, Mr Bennet is curious to meet and appraise the heir to his estate. Despite Mr Bennet’s initial discouragement, Mr Collins quickly becomes a frequent presence in his life. They correspond regularly, with Mr Collins recounting tales of his follies and scrapes and Mr Bennet taking great pleasure from teasing his unsuspecting friend. When a rift develops between the men, Mr Bennet is faced with a choice: he must withdraw into isolation once again or acknowledge that Mr Collins has brought something new and rich to his life. Tender, heart-warming and peppered with disarming humour, The Longbourn Letters reimagines the characters of Pride and Prejudice and perfectly captures the subtleties of human relationships and the power of friendship.
More on The Other Bennet Sister:
In Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Mary is the middle of the five Bennet girls and the plainest of them all, so what hope does she have? Prim and pious, with no redeeming features, she is unloved and seemingly unlovable.
The Other Bennet Sister, though, shows another side to Mary. An introvert in a family of extroverts; a constant disappointment to her mother who values beauty above all else; fearful of her father’s sharp tongue; with little in common with her siblings - is it any wonder she turns to books for both company and guidance? And, if she finds her life lonely or lacking, that she determines to try harder at the one thing she can be: right.
One by one, her sisters marry - Jane and Lizzy for love; Lydia for some semblance of respectability - but Mary, it seems, is destined to remain single and live out her life at Longbourn, at least until her father dies and the house is bequeathed to the reviled Mr Collins.
But when that fateful day finally comes, she slowly discovers that perhaps there is hope for her, after all.
Simultaneously a wonderfully warm homage to Jane Austen and a delightful new story in its own right, Janice Hadlow's The Other Bennet Sister is, at its heart, a life-affirming tale of a young woman finding her place in the world. Witty and uplifting, it will make you feel - and cheer - for Mary as you never have before.
For more on Rose Servitova, visit