About

Who would marry Mr Collins? In Pride and Prejudice, Charlotte Lucas famously does - but was becoming a clergyman's wife really such a bad bargain? Mary Crawford obviously thinks so.

From charming Henry Tilney and serious Edmund Bertram to ambitious Mr Elton and unforgettable Mr Collins, Jane Austen filled her novels with clergymen — and with women whose love, marriage and financial security were often entwined with a gentleman's prospects.

Moving between Jane Austen's life and her novels, Emma Darlington explores themes of love, money, marriage, and life in the parsonage — and asks whether Charlotte Lucas might, after all, have known exactly what she was doing.