Duty and Desire Duty and Desire Duty and Desire is a 2004 historical Romance novel by Pamela Aidan. The second in the "Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman" trilogy, the novel examines Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" from the perspective of Fitzwilliam Darcy, the central male character of that novel. In relation to "Pride and Prejudice", on which the novel is based, "Duty and Desire" takes place between Darcy's initial leaving of Hertfordshire and his reappearance in "Pride"'s narrative at Rosings Park. Following on from the events of "An Assembly Such as This", the novel opens with Fitzwilliam Darcy preparing for the Christmas season with his
Pride and Prejudice £110 (). In renaming the novel, Austen probably had in mind the "sufferings and oppositions" summarised in the final chapter of Fanny Burney's "Cecilia", called "Pride and Prejudice", where the phrase appears three times in block capitals. It is possible that the novel's original title was altered to avoid confusion with other works. In the years between the completion of "First Impressions" and its revision into "Pride and Prejudice", two other works had been published under that name: a novel by Margaret Holford and a comedy by Horace Smith. Austen sold the copyright for the novel to Thomas Egerton from