Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman is the collective name given to a trilogy of historical romance novels written by Pamela Aidan. As the title suggests, they are based heavily on Jane Austen's novel "Pride and Prejudice", and feature many events of the novel as seen from the perspective of Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy, the central male character of Austen's novel. The trilogy of novels explores Darcy's perspective on the events of "Pride and Prejudice" - in particular focusing on his developing relationship with and feelings for Elizabeth Bennet, the protagonist of the earlier novel. However, the novels also explore Darcy's
Pride and Prejudice and reviewer George Henry Lewes declared that he "would rather have written "Pride and Prejudice", or "Tom Jones", than any of the Waverley Novels". Charlotte Brontë, however, in a letter to Lewes, wrote that "Pride and Prejudice" was a disappointment, "a carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden, with neat borders and delicate flowers; but ... no open country, no fresh air, no blue hill, no bonny beck". Austen for her part thought the "playfulness and epigrammaticism" of "Pride and Prejudice" was excessive, complaining in a letter to her sister Cassandra in 1813 that the novel lacked "shade" and should have had