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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN num: 9781402212888
ISBN number: 1402212887
Label: Sourcebooks Landmark
Manufacturer: Sourcebooks Landmark
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 352
Printing Date: November 01, 2008
Publishing house: Sourcebooks Landmark
Sale Popularity Level: 325686
Studio: Sourcebooks Landmark
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Product Description:
A Young Woman Longing for Adventure and an Artistic Life...
Because she's an illegitimate child, Eliza is raised in the rural backwater with very little supervision. An intelligent, creative, and free-spirited heroine, unfettered by the strictures of her time, she makes friends with poets William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge, finds her way to London, and eventually travels the world, all the while seeking to solve the mystery of her parentage. With fierce determination and irrepressible spirits, Eliza carves out a life full of adventure and artistic endeavor.
PRAISE FOR JOAN AIKEN
'Others may try, but nobody comes close to Aiken in writing sequels to Jane Austen.'
Publishing housesWeekly
'Aiken's story is rich with humor, and her language is compelling. Readers captivated with Elinor and Marianne Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility will thoroughly enjoy Aiken's crystal gazing, but so will those unacquainted with Austen.'
Booklist
'...innovative storyteller Aiken again pays tribute to Jane Austen in a cheerful spinoff of Sense and Sensibility.'
Kirkus Reviews
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Rated by buyers 
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Have you ever read a totally unfavorable book review so full of acrimony that it left you wondering if you would have the same reaction? I have, and am often hooked into trying out a book to see if I agree. So when I read a collection of reviews gathered at the Austenfans website against Joan Aiken's novel Eliza's Daughter : A Sequel to Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, I was intrigued. Here are a few of the zingers to set the mood. "It is the worst JA sequel I have ever read", "I wonder why ANYONE would have bothered to write something like this!", "I cannot recommend this book, except as an example of what NOT to do when writing a sequel to any great novel, especially Jane Austen.", or the final insult, "How did it even get published?" Ouch! To add further to the mêlée, this website was created and is maintained by Sourcebooks, the current publisher of Eliza's Daughter originally issued in 1984 and now available in a new edition. Cleverly, only a publisher of this depth and confidence would have the strength and wisdom to assemble such a collection of scathing reviews and post them as publicity. A blunder - or a stroke of marketing savvy? We shall see.
Originally published in 1984, Eliza's Daughter continues the story of a very minor character in Sense and Sensibility who receives scant mention in the original novel as the illegitimate child of Eliza Williams and her seducer John Willoughby. The infant, also named Eliza Williams is placed by her guardian Colonel Brandon in the care of a negligent foster mother in the village of Byblow Bottom, an infamous Regency era repository for the natural offspring of public persons who were reared away from their parents to avoid disclosure of their existence. Raised in this rural backwater Eliza learns to survive under difficult circumstance and scrape together a bit of education, all the while trying to unravel the mystery of her parentage. Clever and creative, she knows by age twelve that education is the key to her survival and seeks out Colonel Brandon's attorney's and asks for their assistance while he is abroad serving in the army. They send her on to the Rev. Edward Ferrars and his wife Elinor nee Dashwood at Delaford. The Ferrars are living in genteel poverty as a country vicar and his wife with one daughter away at school and Elinor's mother the once elegant Mrs. Dashwood now suffering from mental illness. Their acquaintance is strained and they decide to pack her off to school in Bath where their daughter Nell attends and Elinor's younger sister Margaret Dashwood is a teacher. She is not very welcome there either, but she endures and excels in music having a gifted voice which brings her some attention.
As the natural daughter of who knows whom, Eliza is definitely a social pariah and reminded of it with every connection and situation where she lives. The mystery of her parentage still lingers, but as the plot develops clues appear like bread crumbs along a trail bringing her closer to an answer by directing her to London and then on to Portugal. Ms. Aiken writes an engaging tale and knows how to keep our attention by a series of misadventures and recoveries by the heroine. We meet new characters as well who are interesting and authentic, but it is her treatment of Austen's original characters that is troubling and forms the largest objection from all of the previous reviewers.
When Austen's novel concluded we were left with the happy thought that both Marianne and Elinor were married, their mother Mrs. Dashwood and younger sister Margaret are in better financial circumstances and the adversarial characters such as Lucy Steele, John Willoughby, and Mrs. Ferrars were much the worse for their life choices. So, as we read Eliza's Daughter and discover that the happily-ever-after does not really exist beyond the last page of the original novel it is more than a bit unsettling. Colonel and Marianne Brandon are childless and have departed for India and show little if no interest in Eliza's well being. This seems odd, since the Colonel has in the past always shown great concern for Eliza's grandmother, mother and his friends. Elinor and Edward live a penurious and Spartan life eeking out an exsistence at Delaford. Edward is now a bitter man more concerned for his parishioners than his family and Elinor faintly the strong and wise woman that we knew from the past. Their only surviving child Nell is a pill, negligent of her familiar duties and callous to others feelings. Mrs. Dashwood was always a bit unfocused on reality, but now she is insane? Margaret Dashwood is a spinster working as a teacher then a companion? As one reviewer stated, "I found it to be so totally mean spirited toward all the characters we have come to know and love so dearly", and I have to agree. In defense of Ms. Aiken's choice of plot and character development, if everything was sunshine and syllabub, there would be nothing to write about, so in ... Read More
Rated by buyers 
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For avid Jane Austen readers sequels are fun and not to be taken seriously but we cannot help hoping that someone else might capture the magic. Joan Aitken is the best of many who try to prolong the enjoyment of Miss Austen's style. This story, Eliza's Daughters,has ingenious plot lines, moves along at a great pace till a quick and rather weak ending. An enjoyable read , nevertheless.
Rated by buyers -
In her half dozen or so Jane Austen sequels, the late Joan Aiken usually chose as her heroine one of the minor characters of the original novel and built a story around her, with Austen's original leads turning up in lesser roles. For this one, she selected someone whose existence was a key plot element in "Sense and Sensibility," but who never actually appeared there, Willoughby's illegitimate daughter.
When we meet her, our heroine-to-be seems destined for the usual fate that 18th Century rich men bestowed on their mistresses' daughters, who were farmed out in some remote village until big enough to earn their keep as a servant or governess or some such. But fate and Aiken have other plans for Eliza's daughter. And I think you'll find her story indeed interesting, eventful, Austenesque and a worthy period page turner.
Aiken was a wonderful writer in her own right and, to my mind, far and away the best of the Austen imitators and well worth reading--I especially liked her "Jane Fairfax." But I do have some "buts" here. For one thing, Aiken lacked Austen's gift for wit and creating the memorable characters who unintentionally supply it; I really miss that here. For another, Eliza, our heroine-narrator, tells us up front that she's going to leave some things out of her story, then makes good on that promise by throwing us a curve at the end that I don't think we deserved. Also I think you'll not much like the ever-afters she gave the beloved S&S characters who reappear in this one. All of which is why I'm reluctantly giving this re-release of one of Aiken's earliest Austen sequels three stars instead of four.
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