I think Dear Jane’s work is about the most rewritten and
sequels added to in a category other than Science Fiction. It all started in
1913 with Old Friends and New Fancies by Sybil G. Brinton and has been roaring
along ever since.
I’ve read a bunch of them—the sequels, not the rewrites. I
don’t like rewrites, they seem too presumptuous, as if they know better than
the original author. Sequels allows us to find out more about secondary or
lesser characters. Some of my absolute favorites are The Lydia Bennet Story,
Charlotte Collins, The Diary of Captain Wentworth, and Mercy’s Embrace—a three
book series about Ann Elliott’s sister Elizabeth. Oh, you are not Janites,
okay, Lydia and Charlotte
I even have a sequel started myself. It isn’t one of my
files that I open frequently due to the fact that one must be in the mood for
the totally different speech patterns and spellings necessary to keep the time
period right. (I’m assuming all historical writers understand this, but OTOH, I
have seen some written with totally modern language. Most Janites would
disapprove.
So it occurs to me that a lot of famous books might deserve
sequels and I’d like to see what you think.
Without doing Jane, or Conan Doyle or Shakespeare, and
not taking up the ones that already exist in SF, like Star Wars, Star Trek,
Stargate, and not Harry Potter, what great stand alone book or famous character
from fiction of any kind would you like to write a sequel to? No, we won’t
demand you get to it, just a little bit of daydreaming about if you could or
maybe someday should.
