Later Days at Highbury

Jane Austen fans whose appetites haven't been satiated by the current adaptations of her work in film and TV productions may take some pleasure in this epistolary novel by Austen's great-great-grandniece. As in her earlier novel, A Visit to Highbury, Austen-Leigh attempts to enlarge on the story Austen constructed with such precision in Emma. Set in the Sussex village of Highbury, this extended version is told through the correspondence between Mrs. Goddard, mistress of the local school for girls, and her lonely sister, Mrs. Pinkney, now living in London. We learn that the Knightlys, the despicable Vicar Elton and his wife Augusta, Harriet and Robert Martin, the kind and beautiful Miss Elizabeth Martin and poor, chattering old Miss Bates are still thriving and carrying on about such matters as the importance of a new ball gown. Yet, there are big changes. Emma's family home, Hartfield, is now let to strangers. Mrs. Goddard rejects the sewing and crocheting that Emma did so brilliantly as ""a most thorough-going waste of time."" Even more unexpected in this world is Mrs. Goddard's praise for the bold way in which Mrs. Pinkney's niece runs away to Barbadoes with an Irish footman. Chiding her sister, Mrs. Goddard proclaims: ""it is a new world, my dear Charlotte. We must all be prepared for change."" Austen might have enjoyed such upheavals, but she would have rendered them with an exquisite, caustic irony that is missing from this bit of nostalgic fluff. (Nov.)