IMAGINING THE BENNETS is a monumental prequel, spanning forty years of family saga before Pride and Prejudice. It’s original, intricate, intelligent, and moving. The story offers a wonderful interpretation of the earlier era and is an imagination that is loyal to the original. The narrative is an uncompromising, romantic, hard-hitting, heart-rending, viscerally real, historically epic tale.

How did a rebellious boy with a miserable childhood, who ran away to sea at 15 and whose subsequent life was rich, varied and notable, become the sanguine Lewis Bennet? And how did a feisty, independent, accomplished and well-educated Catherine Gardiner become the worthy but pressured, driven and intense Mrs Bennet? They certainly encountered joy, sadness, trials and tribulations in bringing up their five girls, and somehow they shouldered their deepest fears for twenty years, knowing one or more good marriage was the only way to save the family from penury. How did they bring up those magnificent girls? It is a tale for the ages, as relevant today as it was then.

Who were the two individuals who became the middle-aged couple we know so well, and what of their earlier relationship? They fell madly in love and had the world before them. But what happened along the way, their highs and lows, to lead us the beginning of the wonderful Pride and Prejudice and the paucity of warmth we encounter? And what went on behind those well-loved scenes as Lizzie, Jane and Lydia made their marriages? We may proudly think we know, but we may have our own prejudices challenged. This story will inform and entertain you, containing much that was left unspoken in the great book upon which it is based!