This was an ok read for me. I love P&P and am only lukewarm on rewrote sand spin-offs. While I know it happens quite a bit among the upper ten thousand during the Regency era, I did not care for the portrayal of Mr. Darcy as so,etching of a rake. No, I do not think he was a monk. But I doubt he made free with the maids in his friend's house while another sick guest was sleeping just,two doors down the hall. And I didn't care for the friendship with Byron. I can see Wickham being friends with Byron. They were two of a kind. But not Darcy or Bingley. It just didn't work too well for me. “And yet I am the most persecuted of you all,” said Darcy bitterly. “Either they’re stripping me of all my dignity, as well as my smallclothes, or they have me carousing with Lord Byron—to whom I’ve not even been introduced—or treating my dearest, loveliest Elizabeth like a common doxy. They think I have the morals and self-control of a tomcat. What have I done to give anyone that impression, I ask you?” -The League of Austen’s Extraordinary Gentlemen by Margaret Sullivan.It is very likely Maya Slater’s The Private Diary of Mr. Darcy that precipitated this lament from Austen’s most popular hero, another example of an aspiring novelist who apparently has no faith in her ability to create her own characters and plot, yet ensures publication and readership by using the name Darcy in her title. Austen, I think, would appreciate the irony of Slater’s including a fictitious editor’s note that claims that this is a real diary found inside an old desk and as the events reflect so closely the events of P & P, Austen must have known the real people involved and appropriated their story for her novel. After all, Austen cannot possibly have had the talent and imagination to create her own characters and plot; she must have gotten them from somewhere!In The Private Diary of Mr. Darcy, Slater changes many of the characters and events described in P & P. Rather than a thwarted elopement, Wickham succeeds in raping Georgiana, a report is put about Hertfordshire that Jane Bennet is a fortune hunter, and Darcy has numerous sexual encounters with various housemaids. I do not think of Darcy as a saint or a eunuch, but I do think he would have been fastidious about "spoiling his own nest." Slater does create a glimpse into Darcy’s life in London, rounding out our knowledge with various relatives and acquaintances, but again, much of it contradicts the character Austen describes. This Fitzwilliam Darcy is surprisingly passive and lacking in fortitude. One wishes that he would stop wallowing in self-pity and do something!
What do You think about Mr. Darcy's Diary (2009)?
Mr. Darcy would never treat women the way he does in this book. I just don't see it happening.
—Tanaya
men can also be passionate, no matter how proud or irritable some of them are.
—spartan117
Interesting twist on "Pride and Prejudice" from Darcy's point of view.
—Jake
This made me fall for Mr.Darcy all over again.
—asddf
