The excised material, which was discovered by Eckstut while visiting friends at Shelwyck Court, Herefordshire, has been introduced by Eckstut and presented in all its titillating entirety in ‘Pride and Promiscuity: The Lost Sex Scenes of Jane Austen’. The material, as the Preface details, was hidden by Austen’s younger sister Cassandra, and includes controversial passages from her novels as well as relevant correspondence between the author and her sister, and the author and her publishers. To put to rest accusations of academic dishonesty, a leading Austen scholar by the name of Elfrida Drummond endorses the material as authentic. The “Lost Sex Scenes”, the scholar argues, “make necessary completely new interpretations of every Austen novel”. And this from a sceptic who is “by temperament reluctant to credit ‘sensational’ claims even by recognized academic scholars”. The introductory material makes it clear that generations of Austen devotees have been misled by censored versions of her novels.

Eckstut’s findings include “Lost Sex Scenes” from a number of Austen novels, including everyone’s favourite, ‘Pride and Prejudice’ which, it turns out, was originally called ‘Pride and Promiscuity’. The newly-found passages include startling details of Jane’s brief stay at Netherfield, a steamy encounter between Elizabeth and Darcy at Pemberley, and a glimpse into Charlotte and Mr Collins’sex life. Missing passages from other novels like ‘Emma’, ‘Northanger Abbey’ and ‘Mansfield Park’ confirm that no topic was too risqué for this remarkable nineteenth century novelist, including – but not limited to – masturbation, bondage, homosexuality, and incest.

While Eckstut may be a “lower-echelon literary hanger-on” (she is a California-based literary agent) and a “raging Anglophile, of the Masterpiece Theatre-watching, Typhoo-drinking sort”, it will come as no surprise that the “Lost Sex Scenes” are actually the product of Eckstut’s fertile imagination and not Jane Austen’s. Eckstut remains true to Austen’s measured style by imitating her punctuation and diction, inserting passages virtually seamlessly into Austen’s existing oeuvre. So convincing is her prose that many readers have mistaken ‘Pride and Promiscuity’ for a genuine literary find. The results are, according to the President of the Jane Austen Society, “wickedly funny”. And what greater praise could Eckstut hope for than that?

No doubt about it, reading ‘Pride and Promiscuity’ brings with it a certain guilty pleasure, the kind one normally associates with cheating on a diet or indulging in salacious gossip. The first or second “Lost Sex Scene” is sure to elicit a laugh or two quite simply because of the nature of the juxtaposition – nineteenth century decorum meets twenty-first century sexual liberation. Unfortunately, however, after reading a few passages, the humour begins to sound a little forced, the situations contrived. Though introduced and placed in context by Eckstut, the scenes fail to satisfy: they are brief and, at times, sketchy. While Eckstut’s idea is brilliant, the execution falls short off the mark. Still, the author has managed to have the last laugh: during a radio interview of Ecksut and Dr Elfrida Drummond (played by Eckstut’s husband) several callers were genuinely taken in by her elaborate fiction.

Shahbano Bilgrami is a freelance writer and copy editor who lives in Morgantown, West Virginia. Aside from being a regular book and film reviewer, she has had poetry published in An Anthology (OUP 1997) and has authored/contributed to several children’s textbooks during her eight-year period as editor at Oxford University Press, Pakistan. She is currently working on her first novel.

© 2006 Laura Hird All rights reserved.