A surprise (or two)

Darcy’s Story then sold steadily for the next few years.

In 1999, we introduced the New Illustrated Darcy’s Story, with more than 55 prints by the artist Hugh Thomson from a Victorian edition of P&P. Mercifully, he had shown the characters in Regency dress, unlike another artist in the same period!

Although £3.00 more expensive, this version of the novel out sold the trade paperback version from the moment it was published, so we eventually discontinued the original book.

Then, in the autumn of 2005, the telephone rang – a call from the USA.

It was HarperCollins in New York. One of their staff had purchased the original book in the UK and they asked to have the copyright to publish the original book in the States.

We tried to persuade them to publish the Illustrated version, since we knew how popular it had been, but that was much too unusual an idea for them!

So the novel was published in the USA in the summer of 2006.