author

Sybil G. Brinton

Best known for a single, unusual book, this early 20th-century writer imagined what might happen if characters from all six of Jane Austen’s major novels met in one shared world. Her work is often remembered as an early example of Austen-inspired fiction.

1 Audiobook

Old Friends and New Fancies: An Imaginary Sequel to the Novels of Jane Austen

Old Friends and New Fancies: An Imaginary Sequel to the Novels of Jane Austen

by Sybil G. Brinton

About the author

Sybil G. Brinton, also known as Sybil Grace Brinton, was born in 1874 at Stourport-on-Severn in Worcestershire, England. The surviving record of her life is quite limited, but sources agree that she lived with poor health, married in 1908, and died in 1928.

Her reputation rests on one book, Old Friends and New Fancies: An Imaginary Sequel to the Novels of Jane Austen, published in 1913. In it, she brings together characters from all six of Austen’s major novels and builds a new story around them, something many readers and libraries now describe as an early or even first Austen sequel.

Although she did not publish another book, Brinton has kept a small but lasting place in literary history. For Austen readers especially, her novel remains a curious and charming glimpse of how fan-loved worlds were being continued long before modern fan fiction had a name.