Favorites of 2026: Vocal and instrumental music recordings

It's time once again for my favorite music, movies and books first encountered (but not necessarily first issued) in 2026.

When thinking about the list of my favorite recordings from this year I was concerned that my list would be too short, but I needn't have worried. In fact, it's so long I'm dividing this post into two parts: the first will cover vocal and instrumental music, and the second full-length opera. In roughly chronological order by date of composition:

Music before 1800

Virginie Thomas: Nymphes (L'Encelade ECL 2203, released 2023) and Mademoiselle Hilaire (L'Encelade ECL 2502, released 2025)

Virginie Thomas. Image credit: Studio Ledroit-Perrin. Image source: Les Heures Musicales de l’Abbaye de Lessay

These albums showcase Thomas' beautifully clear and pure soprano in the performance of airs written by composers such as Lully, Desmarest, Campra, Leclair, Lambert, Cavalli, and others. On Nymphes Thomas arranges airs into a mini-opera describing the progress of the Nymph of the Seine as she emerges into the human world, discovers the pleasures and pains of love, and finally retreats into "darkness and silence." On Mademoiselle Hilaire Thomas performs airs written specifically for Hilaire Dupuis, a singer in Louis XIV's court, by Dupuis' brother-in-law (Lambert), her niece's husband (Lully), and others.

"Recit de l'Aurore," from Lully and Molière's La Princesse d'Elide, is typical of the lightness and grace with which Thomas performs this exquisite music:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46AsyU-8Xmc

Quand l'amour à vos yeux offre un choix agréable, Jeune beauté laissez-vous enflammer; Moquez-vous d'affecter cet orgueil indomptable Dont on vous dit Qu'il est beau de s'armer. Dans l'âge où l'on est aimable Rien n'est si beau que d'aimer. Soupirez librement pour un amant fidèle, Et bravez ceux qui voudraient vous blâmer; Un cœur tendre est aimable, et le nom de cruelle N'est pas un nom à se faire estimer. Dans le temps où l'on est belle Rien n'est si beau que d'aimer.

When love seems to offer you a pleasant choice, Young beauty, allow yourself to be set alight; Trouble not to feign that indomitable pride That is so often said to be Such a fine weapon in one's armoury. When you are of an age to be loved There can be naught finer than to love. Sigh freely for a true lover, And defy those who would criticise you; A tender heart can be loved, and being called "cruel" Is no way to gain others' esteem. For as long as you have beauty There can be naught finer than to love.

For more, please see my full-length review of Nymphes and Mademoiselle Hilaire.

Vivaldi for diverse instruments. Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra conducted by Nicholas McGegan.

Cover of Vivaldi for diverse instruments, Reference Recordings RR-77CD, released 1997. Image source: Presto Music

Nicholas McGegan served as music director of Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra for 35 years, assuming the position of music director laureate at the end of the 2019-20 season. He brought the group into international prominence and set up a program of regular recording, which now continues on PBO's own label.

This exuberant album of Vivaldi concertos from 1997 showcases the group's virtuosity, featuring soloists from the ensemble: violinists Elizabeth Blumenstock, Katherine Kyme and Lisa Weiss, oboists Marc Schachman and Gonzalo X. Ruiz, bassoonist Heather Carruthers, and horn players R.J. Kelley and Paul Avril. Discovering it was a lovely way for us to re-experience the ensemble that played a key role in developing our love of Baroque music (see the post Attunement for our conversion experience).

The first movement, "Allegro," from the Concerto in F for violin (Blumenstock), 2 horns, 2 oboes and bassoon:

https://youtu.be/_Rc26tzVi5U

Johann Adolf Hasse: Salve Regina. Barbara Bonney and Bernarda Fink, soloists, with Musica Antiqua Köln conducted by Reinhard Goebel.

Cover of Salve Regina, Arkiv Produktion 453 435-2, released 1997. Image source: Presto Music

Johann Adolf Hasse, although hugely popular and influential in his own time, has been underperformed and underrecorded in ours, at least in comparison to his older contemporaries Handel and Vivaldi. The Presto Music catalog includes nearly 7,000 recordings of Handel works, 5,000 by Vivaldi, but just over 300 by Hasse. (Nonetheless, two Hasse works were among my Favorites of 2025: Recordings.)

Hasse wrote three settings of the Salve Regina. Two of them, the setting in A major for contralto and the setting in E flat major for soprano and contralto, are included in this recording. Bernarda Fink is not a contralto, but rather a mezzo-soprano. It shows occasionally in her lowest notes, which are not as full or rich-sounding as those of a true contralto. But she is one of my favorite singers, as is soprano Barbara Bonney (who appears again below). The two are lovely both separately and in duet, as in the final movement of the Salve Regina in E flat major:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1X8l1dSw6g

Et Iesum, benedictum fructum ventris tui, nobis, post hoc exsilium ostende. O clemens: O pia: O dulcis Virgo Maria.

And after this our exile, show unto us Jesus, the blessed fruit of thy womb, O merciful, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary.

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: Cello Concertos. Anner Bylsma, violoncello, with Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment conducted by Gustav Leonhardt.

Cover of C.P.E. Bach, Symphonies [&] Cello Concertos. Erato Veritas 5617942, recorded 1988. Image source: Presto Music

In our day, C.P.E. Bach is seen as a transitional figure between the High Baroque style exemplified by his father Johann Sebastian Bach and the later Classical style. But during C.P.E. Bach's lifetime his fame far eclipsed that of his father. Known as "The Berlin Bach" to distinguish him from his equally famous half-brother Johann Christian ("The London Bach"), he was court composer to Frederick the Great of Prussia, and later succeeded Telemann as director of sacred music in Hamburg. Over a career lasting six decades he composed more than 1000 works. He was also a renowned teacher; his Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments (1753) went through multiple editions by the end of the century and was studied by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven.

The great Dutch period-instrument cellist Anner Bylsma passed away in 2019, but I am grateful that he recorded extensively; it means that there are still recordings of his for me to discover. The second movement "Largo con sordini, mesto" (broadly with mutes, mournfully) from Cello Concerto No. 3 in A major, composed in 1753:

https://youtu.be/tqdUO_ooGpg

Music after 1800

Franz Schubert: Lieder. Barbara Bonney, soprano, with Geoffrey Parsons, piano, and Sharon Kam, clarinet on "Der Hirt auf dem Felsen."

Cover of Schubert: Lieder, Teldec/Warner 2564 69719-3, recorded 1994. Image source: Presto Music

To my surprise, given my previous resistance to art song as a form, albums of Schubert lieder sung by the Dutch soprano Elly Ameling have featured on my favorite recordings list for 2024 and 2025. More surprising is that even though Ameling was in the running again, Barbara Bonney is this year's Schubert favorite.

Bonney began her career as a lyric soprano in opera, and for a decade or so was the reigning Sophie in Richard Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier. Her performances in this role at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in 1985 conducted by Georg Solti, and Vienna Staatsoper in 1994 conducted by Carlos Kleiber, are both on video; from the latter you can see her final love duet with Anne Sofie von Otter's Octavian in the post Anne Sofie von Otter: Swan Song.

But Bonney has also devoted herself to lieder throughout her career. And in mid-career, for two seasons between 1999 and 2001 she performed only in recitals. Her performances of lieder by Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel have been featured before on E&I; see the posts on Sounds and Sweet Airs: The Forgotten Women of Classical Music and Shakespeare's sisters: Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel and Maria Anna Mozart. So perhaps I should have anticipated the appeal of her selection of Schubert lieder.

A word about why Elly Ameling is not on this list. This year I came across her entry in accompanist Graham Johnson's Hyperion Schubert Edition Complete Songs series (Vol 7: Schubert in 1815, Vol. 1)), and confidently expected it to be on this list. I think Ameling's voice is almost perfectly suited to this repertoire, and Graham Johnson's liner notes give a detailed analysis of each song. But as the very title of the Hyperion disc suggests, it is aimed at Schubert completists. In 1815, the 18-year-old Schubert wrote 140 songs, or an average of almost a dozen each month, a pace that would have left the Elvis Costello of 1979–80 in the dust. Not all of the teenaged Schubert's songs are masterpieces, either musically or poetically. Ameling's disc opens with the obscure 11-minute opus "Minona," the rewards of which (despite Johnson's advocacy) don't justify its running time.

I appreciate Johnson's archival impulse, and would not want to be without Ameling's performance of songs such as "Meeres Still," setting a poem by Goethe. But I think I'll be listening to the Bonney recording significantly more often. It is filled with songs of a consistently high level, Bonney's voice is fresh and pure, and her accompanist Geoffrey Parsons subtle and supportive.

Bonney's Schubert selection opens with the simple and lovely "Ellens Gesang III: Hymne an die Jungfrau 'Ave Maria'," one of his best-known works. The poem is one of seven passages from Sir Walter Scott's The Lady of the Lake translated by Adam Storck into German and set by Schubert in 1825. In this sequence from Canto Third, the heroine Ellen Douglas and her exiled (but loyal) father have fled their dwelling at the approach of the King's forces, and sheltered in the Goblin's Cave. There Ellen offers up a prayer for safety to the Virgin Mary; the piano suggests the lone harp that accompanies her:

https://youtu.be/tDQj7j-xogM

Ave Maria! Jungfrau mild, Erhöre einer Jungfrau Flehen, Aus diesem Felsen starr und wild Soll mein Gebet zu dir hinwehen. Wir schlafen sicher bis zum Morgen, Ob Menschen noch so grausam sind. O Jungfrau, sieh der Jungfrau Sorgen, O Mutter, hör ein bittend Kind! Ave Maria! Ave Maria! Unbefleckt! Wenn wir auf diesen Fels hinsinken Zum Schlaf, und uns dein Schutz bedeckt Wird weich der harte Fels uns dünken. Du lächelst, Rosendüfte wehen In dieser dumpfen Felsenkluft, O Mutter, höre Kindes Flehen, O Jungfrau, eine Jungfrau ruft! Ave Maria! Ave Maria! Reine Magd! Der Erde und der Luft Dämonen, Von deines Auges Huld verjagt, Sie können hier nicht bei uns wohnen. Wir woll’n uns still dem Schicksal beugen, Da uns dein heil’ger Trost anweht; Der Jungfrau wolle hold dich neigen, Dem Kind, das für den Vater fleht. Ave Maria!

Ave Maria! maiden mild! Listen to a maiden's prayer! Thou canst hear though from the wild; Thou canst save amid despair. Safe may we sleep beneath thy care, Though banish'd, outcast and reviled— Maiden! hear a maiden's prayer; Mother, hear a suppliant child! Ave Maria! Ave Maria! undefiled! The flinty couch we now must share Shall seem with down of eider piled, If thy protection hover there. The murky cavern's heavy air Shall breathe of balm if thou hast smiled; Then, Maiden! hear a maiden's prayer, Mother, list a suppliant child! Ave Maria! Ave Maria! stainless styled. Foul demons of the earth and air, From this their wonted haunt exiled, Shall flee before thy presence fair. We bow us to our lot of care, Beneath thy guidance reconciled; Hear for a maid a maiden's prayer, And for a father hear a child! Ave Maria!

Additional favorites 

Ella Fitzgerald: Like Someone in Love, with Stan Getz (tenor sax) and Ted Nash (alto sax); orchestra arranged and conducted by Frank DeVol.

Cover of Like Someone in Love, Verve 314 511 524-2, released 1957. Photo credit: Phil Stern. Image source: Goatless

Like Someone in Love is Ella Fitzgerald's In the Wee Small Hours, an album of torch songs that creates a hushed mood. The songs express anticipation and yearning; the joys of dawning love and the sorrow of inevitable loss. Ella's inimitable voice had gained warmth but lost little of its purity as she entered her 40s. Cushioned by DeVol's lush string arrangements and accompanied on four of the tracks by Stan Getz's understated soloing, Ella's singing is seductive, caressing, and sometimes mournful. A treasurable album of songs mostly new to me from the period when she was at her considerable peak.

"Then I'll Be Tired of You," with music by Arthur Schwartz and lyrics by Yip Harburg:

https://youtu.be/BdaXz-Du7XU

I'll be tired of you When stars are tired of gleaming, When I am tired of dreaming, Then I'll be tired of you. This I know is true, When winds are tired of blowing, When grass is tired of growing, Then I'll be tired of you. Beyond the years, 'Til day is night, 'Til wrong is right, 'Til birds refuse to sing, Beyond the years, The echo of my only love Will still be whispering, Whispering. . . And if my throbbing heart Should ever start repeating That it is tired of beating, Then I'll be tired of you.

For more, please see my full-length review of Like Someone in Love.

Marianne Faithfull: "A Perfect Stranger": The Island Anthology.

Cover of "A Perfect Stranger": The Island Anthology, Island 314 524 579-2, released 1998. Image source: Amazon.fr

When I first heard Marianne Faithfull's Broken English in the late 1970s, I was taken aback. I knew of her from her mid-60s folk-pop version of "As Tears Go By." (If you follow the link, the song ends at 3:05, and is followed by a brief interview with the Hullabaloo host Brian Epstein.) Faithfull's version is the original, as I didn't learn until recently; although written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards (in fact, the first song they wrote together), the Stones' version wasn't released until a year after she'd made it a hit. Faithfull's voice during this period has been described as "ethereal" and "fragile," but I hear an untrained but appealing mezzo-soprano.

She spent a few eventful years in the late 1960s as Jagger's girlfriend, during which she co-wrote and recorded "Sister Morphine," only to see the songwriting credits omit her, and the single on which it was the B-side withdrawn by her record company. (She had to file a lawsuit to get credit.) She also appeared as Ophelia in director Tony Richardson's 1969 film version of Hamlet. Then Faithfull pretty much disappeared from public view.

When she re-emerged after a decade largely lost to alcohol and heroin, her voice had deepened and was ragged and raw. As Ann Powers writes in the liner notes of "A Perfect Stranger," Faithfull's ravaged voice "communicated a personal history that required no specifics. . .[taking] listeners into a darkness that was hers but also anyone's who had been silenced." She sounded like she'd been through an entire lifetime of hard experience; she was only 32.

The songs on Broken English were grief-stricken and world-weary, with a seething anger beneath the surface that could erupt spectacularly—as on "Why'd ya do it," her furious break-up song directed at an unfaithful lover. I learned when writing this post that the words are by the poet Heathcote Williams. Faithfull grabs this poem of male griping about the anger of the woman he's betrayed and turns its on its head; it becomes her enraged dismissal of him.

"A Perfect Stranger" is a selection of Faithfull's work from 1979 to 1995. There are generous inclusions from Broken English and the cabaret-style Strange Weather (1987), and songs culled from less-consistent records, as well as soundtracks, tribute albums, unreleased sessions and live performances. There are some omissions—where is the harshly self-reflective "She's Got A Problem," from A Child's Adventure (1983)?—but her work proves, in the words of a Guardian headline, that she was an artist, not just a muse. After 1995 she would go on to record for another two and a half decades, dying at age 78 in January 2025.

From Broken English, Faithfull's searing cover of John Lennon's "Working Class Hero":

https://youtu.be/8yw89f9kNko

As soon as you're born they make you feel small By giving you no time instead of it all Till the pain is so big you feel nothing at all A working class hero is something to be They hurt you at home and they hit you at school They hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool Till you're so fucking crazy you can't follow their rules A working class hero is something to be When they've tortured and scared you for twenty-odd years And then they expect you to pick a career But you really can't function, you're so full of fear A working class hero is something to be Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV And you think you're so clever and classless and free But you're still fucking peasants as far as I can see A working class hero is something to be There's room at the top, they are telling you still But first you must learn how to smile as you kill If you want to live like the folks on the hill A working class hero is something to be

Biggest disappointment

Uri Caine / Gustav Mahler: Dark Flame. Uri Caine Ensemble.

Cover of Dark Flame, Music Edition | Winter & Winter 910 095, released 2003. Image source: jpc.de

In my household a disc that is never far from our CD player is Wagner e Venezia, an album of Wagner "adaptations" performed by the pianist Uri Caine and his ensemble, and recorded live in Venice. Here is the opening track, "Mild und Liese" from Tristan und Isolde,  otherwise known as the Liebestod (Love-Death):

https://youtu.be/FZYb3i37ve0?t=66

Most of the Wagner arrangements are inventive but recognizable echoes of their orchestral counterparts, but for "Ride of the Valkyries" Caine cleverly mashes up Die Walküre and Paul Dukas' The Sorcerer's Apprentice, to witty effect. Then there's the moment as the ensemble is reaching the final measures of the overture to Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg and the stately bells of the Campanile San Marco ring out in perfect time with the music.

Wagner e Venezia is so good that when I came across Caine's reimaginings of Mahler lieder, Dark Flame, I didn't hesitate. (OK, it only cost 50 cents, but these days I have no place to put any more CDs, so I choose carefully.) As soon as I put it in my player, though, anticipation turned to dismay. I found it unlistenable. Spoken word is sprinkled liberally throughout the album, and Mahler's haunting melodies are so transformed as to be unrecognizable. A crashing disappointment.

My admiration for Wagner e Venezia remains unstinting, but on the basis of Dark Flame I don't think I'm going to be doing any further exploration of Uri Caine's discography right away. You may feel differently, of course. Should you be curious you can listen on YouTube or other streaming services.

Next time: Favorites of 2026: Opera recordings

The Other Bennet Sister: the Janice Hadlow novel

Cover of the U.S. edition of The Other Bennet Sister by Janice Hadlow, Holt Paperbacks, 2021. Image source: Bookshop.org

In Pride and Prejudice, Mary Bennet is the overlooked and scorned Bennet sister. Using the first edition as digitized by Project Gutenberg, I did a word count: Elizabeth is mentioned 768 times, including forms of her name such as Lizzy (used by family members), Eliza (used by Charlotte Lucas), and Miss Bennet (used by social acquaintances when Jane is not present); Jane is mentioned 331 times (including as Miss Bennet); Lydia, 171; Kitty (also as Catherine), 81; and Mary, a mere 37. While I make no claims for the absolute accuracy of these numbers, their relative magnitude is notable: Elizabeth is mentioned 20 times more often than Mary.

On those rare occasions when Mary is referenced, the narrator's descriptions are not kind; words associated with her include "moraliz[ing]," "plain," "pedantic," "conceited," and "affected." She is the object of several cutting narratorial remarks. At her very first appearance, in fact, we learn that "Mary wished to say something very sensible, but knew not how" (Vol. I, Ch. I). Later, we are told that she "piqued herself on the solidity of her reflections" (Vol. I, Ch. V); that her "vanity" (rather than her love for music) makes her "always impatient for display" although she "had neither genius or taste" (Vol. I, Ch. VI); and that "an opportunity of exhibiting was delightful to her" although her musical performances are greeted with "derision" by her younger sisters—hardly paragons of taste, but (like many teenagers before and since) unsympathetic connoisseurs of the ridiculous (Vol. I, Ch. XVIII).

When Jane and Elizabeth return home from Netherfield after Jane's illness, "They found Mary, as usual, deep in the study of thorough bass and human nature; and had some new extracts to admire, and some new observations of thread-bare morality to listen to" (Vol. I, Ch. XII). Later we hear an example of that threadbare morality when the Bennets learn that Lydia has eloped with Wickham, but there are no signs that a marriage has taken place. At the dinner table Mary says to Elizabeth,

"Unhappy as the event must be for Lydia, we may draw from it this useful lesson; that loss of virtue in a female is irretrievable—that one false step involves her in endless ruin—that her reputation is no less brittle than it is beautiful,—and that she cannot be too much guarded in her behaviour towards the undeserving of the other sex."

Elizabeth lifted up her eyes in amazement, but was too much oppressed to make any reply. Mary, however, continued to console herself with such kind of moral extractions from the evil before them. (Vol. III, Ch. V)

Mary's self-consolation is misplaced. Elizabeth understands that Lydia's "endless ruin" will encompass all of her sisters, who, due to the ineradicable stain of their sister's disgrace, will be viewed as pariahs by eligible men.

Janice Hadlow's brilliant conceit in The Other Bennet Sister (Henry Holt, 2020) is to view the action of Pride and Prejudice from the point of view of the neglected, isolated, and awkward Mary. Hadlow's novel became the basis of the excellent 2026 BBC television series. Like the series, Hadlow's novel far exceeded my expectations: I thought it was well-structured, well-written and engaging, and would recommend it to readers open to imagining the lives of Austen's characters outside of the action of her novels. [1]

Janice Hadlow in 2013, when she was controller in charge of programming for BBC 2. Image source: BBC Radio 4

Inevitably, there are small and large differences between the novel and series. Some changes made for the series have the evident intention of heightening the drama which, in a visual medium, must be shown. Novels, of course, can give us greater access to the characters' thoughts and feelings, and it is in the relation of Mary's interior world that Hadlow's novel is most vividly imagined.

Among the more significant differences: in the novel Mary does not go to the Gardiners' house as governess to their children as she does in the series, and so there are no painful scenes of the "governess-trade" (as Jane Fairfax calls it in Austen's Emma). Tom Hayward's character in the novel is less awkward and more at ease in company, but still slow to express his feelings. The explanation of his reticence in the novel is not his understanding with another woman, as it is in the series, but rather his own feelings of constraint due to his precarious position as a barrister just starting his career.

The series aligns Tom strongly with Sense and Sensibility's Edward Ferrars, while the novel suggests parallels with another Austen hero, Captain Frederick Wentworth of Persuasion. Like Wentworth when he first meets Anne Elliot, Tom has "no hopes of attaining affluence, but in the chances of a most uncertain profession" (Persuasion, Ch. IV). It is only after the successful resolution of his first important case that Tom is in a financial and reputational position that would enable him to approach Mary as a suitor rather than a friend.

When Tom accompanies the Gardiners and Mary on their visit to the Lakes, he and Mary are drawn closer together, and she begins to anticipate, and hope, that he may make a declaration. But when they are joined by a party consisting of Tom's free-thinking friend William Ryder, together with Mary's nemesis Caroline Bingley, Caroline's snooty sister Mrs. Hurst and her sot of a husband, Tom withdraws emotionally and behaves towards Mary with greater coolness and reserve.

She is at a loss to understand why he has suddenly become more remote, but is determined to have the chance to find out by joining him and the others on a hike up the high peak of Scafell. Despite Mrs. Gardiner's repeated hints that she and Mary might be more comfortable remaining at the inn, having tea and reading books, "Mary was not to be persuaded" (p. 370). And it is on the expedition up Scafell that a bitter remark of Tom's about Ryder brings enlightenment to Mary about the reasons for Tom's change of manner:

As Mary stood watching him walk away, it burst upon her quite suddenly that Mr. Hayward was jealous—jealous of his friend. It was such an extraordinary idea that it took a moment for her to absorb it. At first it seemed preposterous, presumptuous even—who was she, after all, to imagine two men could feel strongly enough about her to arouse such a sensation?. . .But she could think of no other way to account for Mr. Hayward's behaviour over the past few days. His discomfort had been very marked when he had seen her in Mr. Ryder's company. His silent withdrawal when he met them walking from the inn—his obvious ill humour just now, so unlike his usual open, frank disposition—what else could it imply but displeasure with what he regarded as his friend's overtures to her? (p. 374)

Mary's thoughts, expressed in free indirect style, echo those of Persuasion's Anne Elliot when she attends a concert at the Bath Assembly Rooms in a family party that includes her cousin, William Elliot. Mr. Elliot pays her marked attentions, which are observed by an increasingly unhappy Captain Wentworth. At the first opportunity Wentworth abruptly informs Anne that he is leaving the concert.

"Is not this song worth staying for?" said Anne, suddenly struck by an idea which made her yet more anxious to be encouraging.

"No!" he replied impressively, "there is nothing worth my staying for;" and he was gone directly.

Jealousy of Mr Elliot! It was the only intelligible motive. Captain Wentworth jealous of her affection! Could she have believed it a week ago; three hours ago! For a moment the gratification was exquisite. But, alas! there were very different thoughts to succeed. How was such jealousy to be quieted? How was the truth to reach him? How, in all the peculiar disadvantages of their respective situations, would he ever learn of her real sentiments? It was misery to think of Mr Elliot’s attentions. Their evil was incalculable. (Ch. XX)

The Other Bennet Sister is filled with allusions to Austen's novels, and to the 1995 BBC series of Pride and Prejudice adapted by Andrew Davies. (Hadlow's representation of the character of Mrs. Bennet in particular seems to draw significantly on the indelible performance of Alison Steadman in the 1995 series.) To my occasional annoyance, some famous passages in Pride and Prejudice are given weaker paraphrases in The Other Bennet Sister, and when they are recognizably quoted they are often placed in the mouths of different characters or given different meanings or contexts.

One example must serve for many. The opening sentence of Pride and Prejudice is one of the most famous in all English literature: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." In the 1995 BBC series Andrew Davies gives this line (shorn of the first phrase) to Elizabeth, who speaks it archly to her sisters as their mother informs Mr. Bennet of the arrival in their neighborhood of a rich unmarried man, Mr. Bingley. In The Other Bennet Sister, that first phrase missing from the 1995 series finds a place in a conversation between two other characters, and is given a different context: here it is asserted not that everyone knows that rich single men must be looking for marriage partners, but that women should not aspire to matches above their station:

"Confine yourself to your proper sphere, Miss Bennet. Do not trespass where you cannot hope to succeed. . .Presumption of that kind leads only to disappointment and humiliation where matters of the heart are concerned."

Mary had promised herself she would not allow Caroline Bingley to provoke her, that she would not sink to exchanging insults—but she could contain herself no longer. . .

"You seem to know a great deal about rejection. Is this a lesson you have learnt from extensive study? Or do you perhaps owe it to experience of a more personal nature?"

. . ."I speak only from what I have observed. It is a truth universally acknowledged, I believe." (p. 306) [2]

But these minor incongruencies with Austen's novel are, in the end, not too bothersome a flaw, and may be the author's way of signalling the reader not to expect any attempt at exact duplication of Austen's characters. What I said of the series—that it is "much more than a pastiche of characters and scenes from Austen"—is true also of the book. We follow Mary as she grows and takes chances she would not have dared before. And we see her learn the bitter lesson that it's not only true that, as her reading of Aristotle tells her, we can make our own happiness, but we can also, through misunderstanding and false pride, make our own misery. The Other Bennet Sister stands on its own as a nuanced and imaginative expansion of Austen's characters and their world.

For my post on the 2026 BBC series, please see The Other Bennet Sister.

---

1. As I mention in my post on the BBC series (link immediately above), Jane Austen herself was not averse to imagining the continuing lives of her characters after the end of the novels—including Mary.
2. Of course, Mary's reference to Caroline's "extensive study" of romantic disappointment is a faint echo of a conversation among Darcy, Caroline Bingley and Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice where Darcy asserts that in addition to dancing, drawing, music, and a smattering of French and Italian, a truly accomplished woman "must yet add something more substantial in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading” (Ch. VIII).

Newspaper noir: While the City Sleeps

Lobby card for When the City Sleeps (1956), directed by Fritz Lang. Image source: FilmAffinity US

In film noir, we're faced with a world of corruption and evil which leaves no character untouched. The morally compromised protagonist may be an ex-con (Jeff Bailey in Out of the Past (1947)), sleep with his partner's wife (Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon (1941)), or stick his neck out for none of the desperate refugees who crowd into his bar (Rick Blaine in Casablanca (1943)). But he moves through the world abiding by his own hard-won code, although it may lead him into danger or even death. A late Fritz Lang film, While the City Sleeps (1956), takes the morally compromised protagonist to new depths.

A killer is stalking women in New York City. A librarian and a schoolteacher—symbols of vulnerable single womanhood—have been found brutally murdered; at the scene of the first crime, "Ask Mother" has been written on the wall with the victim's lipstick. The New York Sentinel newspaper whips up a frenzy (and boosts circulation) by leading almost every edition with screaming headlines about the Lipstick Killer. [1]

The Sentinel whips up a frenzy.

At this moment of crisis Walter Kyne (Vincent Price), the idle and pleasure-loving son of the founder of the Sentinel, takes over the flagship paper his father built over decades and ran with an unerring news sense even as he laying dying in his sickbed. Kyne has no intention of being a hands-on owner; he just wants to enjoy the vast wealth his inherited media empire generates. But he has no idea which of several candidates to choose to run the place in his absence.

So Kyne creates a new position, Executive Director (or as he describes it, "someone to do the actual work"). To fill it he sets up a cutthroat competition to solve the Lipstick Killer case, which pits the smarmy head of the wire service Mark Loving (George Sanders), the hard-nosed managing editor of the newspaper Jon Griffith (Thomas Mitchell), and the playboy photo service chief Harry Kritzer (James Craig) against one another. The paper's star reporter and the anchor of its nightly television news show, Ed Mobley (Dana Andrews), tries to keep himself above the fray, but that proves to be impossible.

The newsroom is an incestuous stew. Mobley is dating Loving's virginal secretary Nancy Liggett (Sally Forrest), whom Loving also—Lovingly?—drapes his arm around when she's in his office.

Nancy attempts to peel Loving's hand off her shoulder while taking dictation.

Meanwhile, Loving has a dissatisfied mistress, columnist Mildred Donner (Ida Lupino), whom he sends to seduce Mobley to get information. She doesn't seem too unhappy about the assignment.

Mildred gives Mobley the eye over a drink or four.

And Kritzer is sleeping with Kyne's brassy wife Dorothy (Rhonda Fleming), who tries to plant suggestions in her husband's ear that favor her lover. In a coincidence that will have importance in the plot, their love nest is directly across the hall from Nancy's apartment.

Incidentally, any resemblance between Ed Mobley and Edward Murrow is probably intentional. The film is adapted by veteran screenwriter Casey Robinson from Charles Einstein's 1953 novel The Bloody Spur (whose title is taken from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar: "But hollow men, like horses hot at hand,/Make gallant show and promise of their mettle./But when they should endure the bloody spur,/They fall their crests and, like deceitful jades,/Sink in the trial"). At the time Einstein's novel was published, Murrow's television career was well underway; by the time the film was in production his two 1954 CBS See It Now programs on Senator Joseph McCarthy had made Murrow the image of the fearless, incorruptible journalist.

Edward R. Murrow in the 1950s. Image source: Golden Globes

In collusion with the police detective leading the case, Mobley's longtime friend Lt. Burt Kaufman (Howard Duff), Mobley hatches a plan. On his newscast, as the camera zooms in for a closeup, he taunts the watching killer (John Barrymore, Jr.) as a "momma's boy" who reads "the so-called comics" (a copy of The Strangler, a lurid comic book in the style of EC's Crime SuspenStories, is left at the scene of the second murder).

Mobley taunts the watching Lipstick Killer

The gay-baiting and comics condemnation are very much of their time; the dual moral panics of the Lavender Scare led by McCarthy and Senator Everett Dirksen, and the anti-comics crusade led by psychologist Frederic Wertham (author of Seduction of the Innocent (1954)), reached their peak around the time of Lang's film. That a figure based on Murrow is using the tactics of McCarthyism is perhaps an unintentional irony. [2]

Cover of Crime SuspenStories No. 23, July 1954, illustrating the story "Last Resort" by George Evans. Cover artist: George Evans. Image source: CGC Comics

Still on-air, Mobley then announces his engagement to Nancy, setting up his fiancée as bait for the killer. Nancy learns about the scheme only after Mobley's news show; it's confirmed when she sees the pairing of the engagement announcement with the latest Lipstick Killer story on the front page.

"Lipstick Killer as Mama's Boy/ Congratulations: Edward Mobley to wed Nancy Liggett"

With understandable reluctance, and after Mobley points out the plain-clothes detective who will be shadowing her, Nancy agrees to the fait accompli. After all, what could possibly go wrong?

The corruption and injustice of society and the darkness of the psyche were themes Lang had long explored, first in Weimar Germany (Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler (Dr. Mabuse, The Gambler, 1922), Metropolis (1927), Spione (Spies, 1928), and M (1931)) and later continued in his Hollywood films such as You Only Live Once (1937), The Woman in the Window (1944), and his American masterpiece The Big Heat (1953). But the protagonist setting up his fiancée to be attacked by a serial killer is eyebrow-raising even among the grim scenarios of Lang's other films.

At the same time, Lang's direction of While The City Sleeps seemed to me often to lack the distinctiveness of much of his earlier work. The cinematography by Ernest Laszlo, who also shot Impact (1949), D.O.A. (1949), and Kiss Me Deadly (1955), is sometimes flat—though it's hard to tell if it's primarily the fault of the grainy Warner Bros. Archive Collection DVD transfer I watched.

The scenes that bring out the best in Lang and Laszlo are late in the film, as Mobley chases the killer through the deep shadows of the subway tunnels, providing an opportunity for some taut suspense and striking images as trains bear down on the men in the darkness.

Mobley chases the Lipstick Killer through the subway tunnels.

While The City Sleeps is one of Jonathan Rosenbaum's alternative list of the 100 best American feature films that didn't make the American Film Institute's 1998 list of the 100 greatest American movies. I think there are some other films (and even some other Fritz Lang films) I'd probably put on my alternative 100 list before this one; The Big Heat is a glaring omission on both Rosenbaum's and AFI's lists. But While the City Sleeps is definitely worth watching, especially if you're an Ida Lupino fan—her character is deliciously duplicitous, while remaining fundamentally sympathetic as a woman using her considerable allure to maneuver for power in a man's world.

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1. There was a real "Lipstick Killer" on whom this character was based, who may have killed two adult women and a six-year-old girl in Chicago in late 1945 and early 1946. The murderer used the second victim's lipstick to scrawl a message on the wall of her apartment: "For heavens sake catch me before I kill more I cannot control myself." 17-year-old William Heirens confessed under duress to the killings and was sentenced to three life terms in prison. Characters in the film refer to this real-life case and even quote the "I cannot control myself" message.
2. Also very much of their time is a work culture where all the women in the newsroom are seen as fair game by the men; every character smokes at any opportunity, indoors or out; and they all pound down alcohol at an alarming rate—we see Mobley in particular get absolutely hammered more than once.

The end of summer: The Summer Book

Sophia (Emily Matthews) and her grandmother (Glenn Close) in The Summer Book (2024). Image source: ToveJansson.com

The Summer Book is a film adaptation of the elegiac 1972 novel of the same title by the Finnish writer and artist Tove Jansson (pronounced something like TU-veh YAN-son); the novel's highly-praised English translation by Thomas Teal has been reprinted in the U.S. by New York Review Books.

Cover of the U.S. reprint of The Summer Book by Tove Jansson. Image source: New York Review Books

Jansson is perhaps best known for her Moominland books, which are considered children's classics. But like all the best children's literature, they can be read with pleasure by, and have some implicit messages for, adults as well.

Cover of A Treasury of Moomin Tales, "Adapted from three classic stories by Tove Jansson." Image source: Bookshop.org

The Summer Book is one of five novels and five collections of short stories that Jansson wrote for older readers. It's about Sophia, a six-year-old girl who spends the summer after the death of her mother in a cabin on a small island in the Gulf of Finland with her father and elderly grandmother. As the season blossoms and wanes, the grandmother guides Sophia to an appreciation of the natural world that surrounds them, and helps her come to terms with the inevitability of change and loss.

Jansson herself spent almost every summer in an island cabin, as a child with her family and as an adult joined by her life partner, the artist and teacher Tuulikki Pietilä, whom she met in 1955.

Tuulikki Pietilä with Tove Jansson and Tove's mother Signe Hammarsten Jansson on the island of Klovharun, circa 1960s. Image source: ToveJansson.com

Affectionately known as "Tooti," Pietilä was the model for the Moomin character Too-ticky, always pictured in a striped sweater and beret.

Cover of Moominland Midwinter (1957) by Tove Jansson. Image source: Eustea Reads: A Life in Books and Tea

In The Summer Book the character of Sophia was based on Jansson's niece Sophia, who was six during the summer of 1968, while the grandmother was based on Jansson's mother Signe Hammarsten Jansson (known as "Ham"), also an artist, who was 86 in 1968.

Sophia Jansson's grandmother Signe Hammarsten-Jansson in the 1960s. Image source: Wikimedia Commons

The father is based on Sophia's father and Tove's brother Lars Jansson, who was also an artist and a writer. Sophia's mother Nita passed away when she was young, and, according to the webpage for Sophia's autobiography Three Islands: Father, Mother and Me, her father offered "security and care" but also "an unwavering silence." The actor portraying Lars in The Summer Book, Anders Danielsen Lie, bears a strong resemblance to the photograph of Sophia's father on the cover of Three Islands. That photograph may have been taken during the very summer fictionalized in The Summer Book.

Cover of Tre Öar (Three Islands) by Sophia Jansson, Förlaget, 2025. Image source: Rights & Brands

Screenwriter Robert Jones' adaptation of The Summer Book is a quiet film in which a series of small events and the rhythm of the tides and the weather accumulate emotional weight. The grandmother takes Sophia to her favorite place on the island, the moss-covered Magic Forest; they plant herbs and flowers and watch them grow; the ferryman, Eriksson, arrives with a box of fireworks for Midsommar which includes a surprise gift for Sophia; Sophia and her grandmother discover that a new, wealthier family has erected a prefabricated cottage on a nearby island, and in defiance of a "No Trespassing" sign make themselves at home on their deck.

The film was directed by Charlie MacDowell, and the starkly beautiful land- and water-scapes were shot on 16mm film by cinematographer Sturla Brandth Grøvlen using natural light. Grøvlen's photography is striking; my partner compared the opening scenes of the island in winter to the work of the artist Andy Goldsworthy.

Some of the film's symbolism is perhaps a touch too apparent, and there are both small and significant differences between the film and the book. To take one example, in the book the rich neighbors, a businessman and his family, are unpleasant; in the film, when they discover the grandmother and Sophia on their property, they invite them into the house and offer them cake.

But the performances, particularly of Glenn Close as the grandmother and Finnish actress Emily Matthews as Sophia, are very honest and brave. Close fully inhabits her role as a weathered and wise elder who smokes, drinks, and wanders naked in the woods, while Matthews is all too convincing as a girl who is just another summer or two from young womanhood, but who remains a watchful (and sometimes annoying and willful) child. Anders Danielsen Lie is memorable in the scenes in which he's featured, but for long stretches of the film the father is absent, withdrawn into his own grief.

The Summer Book is meditative and melancholy, and the end of summer is the perfect time to watch. Check your local public library's streaming services. The website ToveJansson.com, the source of many of the images in this post, is a treasure-trove of information about Jansson's life and work. Particularly revelatory for me were the pages Work Fuelled by Desire, about Jansson's courageous determination to break her engagement to a man and live the truth of her love for women at a time when homosexuality was officially illegal, and Island for the Solitary and Free, about the importance of the Pellinge islands to Jansson and the origins of The Summer Book.

Signe Hammarsten Jansson with Sophia Jansson on Klovharun, circa 1960s. Image source: ToveJansson.com

Coda: There is a lovely short film on YouTube narrated by Sophia Jansson, Klovharun, Tove Jansson's summer paradise inspired the Moomin stories, which contains 8mm movie footage shot mainly by Pietilä on Klovharun between 1970 and 1991. There is also a 45-minute documentary, Haru, yksinäisten saari (Haru, Island of the Solitary, 1998), edited from Pietilä's footage by Kanerva Cederström and Riikka Tanner, who paired the images with texts written by Jansson and read by Brigitte Ulfson. The full documentary can be found on familiar video sites.

The Other Bennet Sister

The Other Bennet Sister (BBC, 2026). Left to right: Maddie Close (Jane Bennet Bingley), Poppy Gilbert (Elizabeth Bennet Darcy), Elizabeth Bruccoleri (Mary Bennet), Molly Wright (Kitty Bennet Buncock), and Grace Hogg-Robinson (Lydia Bennet Wickham). Photo credit: James Pardon. Image source: BritBox

I have ambivalent feelings about spoilers in commentary about novels, movies, and opera. I try to avoid them (not entirely successfully) in my writing for E&I, or where they are unavoidable given what I want to discuss, usually set them apart with "Spoiler alert!/End of spoiler" tags.

Of course, there are works of narrative art that are spoiler-proof. Would it ruin Joyce's Ulysses to know before undertaking to read it that Molly Bloom has the final word, and what that word is? Would it ruin an Astaire–Rogers musical to know whether, after their initial antagonism, Fred and Ginger wind up as a romantic couple? Would it ruin Tosca to know how many of the four main characters survive the opera? [1]

Perhaps this is why I've lost count of the number of times I've watched my favorite movies or experienced my favorite operas (although La Bohème would be my Puccini choice rather than Tosca). And it's perhaps why I read and reread the novels of Jane Austen: knowing the outcomes does not diminish the pleasures they offer.

But despite the numerous spoiler-proof examples among my own favorites, I try to avoid learning too much about a narrative work before I encounter it for the first time. Partly this is to preserve the enjoyment of the unfolding story without knowing what will happen. And partly it's to keep my thoughts about what I'm experiencing as free of preconceptions as possible. So when I heard that the BBC streaming service BritBox would be carrying a series based on Janice Hadlow's 2020 novel The Other Bennet Sister, which I hadn't read, I deliberately avoided reviews, promotional interviews, and trailers, and urged watching friends not to tell me about it.

Cover of the U.S. edition of The Other Bennet Sister by Janice Hadlow, Holt Paperbacks, 2021. Image source: Bookshop.org

As a result of avoiding others' thoughts on the series I independently came up with my own (mis)conceptions: I thought that the entire 5-hour, 10-episode series was a retelling of Pride and Prejudice from the point of view of Mary Bennet. Mary, of course, is the middle Bennet daughter, and is plain, bookish, and moralizing where her older and younger sisters are beautiful and kind (Jane), lively and witty (Elizabeth), and gossipy and flirtatious (Kitty and Lydia). Also, while Jane and Elizabeth have a close bond, and Kitty "follow[s] wherever Lydia leads," Mary is something of the odd girl out among the sisters, and does not have a close companion among them.

Austen is unsparing in her description of Mary:

Mary had neither genius nor taste; and though vanity had given her application, it had given her likewise a pedantic air and conceited manner, which would have injured a higher degree of excellence than she had reached. [2]

Seeing the action of Pride and Prejudice from the perspective of the introverted, socially awkward and often-overlooked Mary would have been brilliant enough, and indeed this is how the series begins. We watch the arrival of the Bingley party at the Meryton assembly, Mr. Collins' inept courting of every Bennet sister but Mary, her humiliation at the Netherfield Ball, and, finally, the carriages rolling off with her sisters and their new husbands, leaving her behind.

Title page of Pride and Prejudice: A Novel in Three Volumes. By the author of "Sense and Sensibility." T. Edgerton, 1813. Image source: Internet Archive

We also see a few scenes outside the two inches of ivory of Pride and Prejudice: the growing friendship between Mary and her oculist, Mr. Sparrow (a character not in Austen's novel, played by Aaron Gill), quickly squashed by the overbearing Mrs. Bennet; and, of course, the news of Kitty's marriage to a Mr. Buncock (also Hadlow's invention). But by the end of the second 30-minute episode we have reached the end of the action of Austen's novel, which turns out to be the prelude to Mary's continuing story.

That story mixes elements from multiple Austen novels and their adaptations, primarily—spoiler alert!—Sense and Sensibility. Like Mrs. Dashwood and her daughters on the death of Mr. Dashwood, Mrs. Bennet (Ruth Jones) and Mary (Ella Bruccoleri) are forced to leave their home after the death of Mr. Bennet (an especially ascerbic Richard E. Grant) and the inheritance of the estate by a near relation, Mr. Collins (Ryan Sampson).

While staying in London with her Aunt and Uncle Gardiner (Indira Varma and Richard Coyle), Mary is introduced to Tom Hayward (Dónal Finn). Like Sense and Sensibility's Edward Ferrars, he is shy and unassuming, but Hayward's love of Wordsworth's poetry suggests hidden depths of feeling. Unfortunately, he also resembles Edward Ferrars in turning out to have an existing understanding of mutual commitment with another young woman.

Mary then meets a more available man, William Ryder (Laurie Davidson). Like Sense and Sensibility's Willoughby, he is charming, handsome and impulsive. Also like Willoughby, his attachment is genuine but his intentions are dubious.

—End of spoilers.—

The 1995 BBC Pride and Prejudice series seems to have been a particular touchstone for the principal screenwriter Sarah Quintrell and casting director Kathleen Crawford. The actress portraying Mary, Ella Bruccoleri, bears a certain resemblance to Lucy Briers, who played Mary in that series:

Left: Ella Bruccoleri as Mary in the 2026 BBC adaptation of The Other Bennet Sister.
Right: Lucy Briers as Mary in the 1995 BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice.
Image sources: Left: Bristol Live; Right: Jane Austen Literary Foundation

In a knowing wink to fans, Briers herself appears in another role in The Other Bennet Sister: she plays the kindhearted family maidservant Mrs. Hill, who becomes a sort of surrogate mother to the lonely Mary.

Lucy Briers as Mrs. Hill in The Other Bennet Sister. Image source: TV Guide

Tanya Reynolds as Caroline Bingley has a supercilious and disapproving look that is not dissimilar to that of the brilliantly awful Anna Chancellor in the same role in 1995:

Left: Tanya Roberts as Caroline Bingley in the 2026 BBC adaptation of The Other Bennet Sister.
Right: Anna Chancellor as Caroline Bingley in the 1995 BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice.
Image sources: Left: Bristol Post; Right: Frock Flicks

And Charlotte Lucas's calmly appraising gaze when she's in the company of Mr. Collins is a feature both of the performance of Anna Fenton-Garvey in The Other Bennet Sister and that of Lucy Scott, who played Charlotte in 1995:

Left: Anna Fenton-Garvey as Charlotte Lucas in the 2026 BBC adaptation of The Other Bennet Sister.
Right: Lucy Scott as Charlotte Lucas in the 1995 BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice.
Image sources: Left: Oxford School of Drama; Right: TV Tropes

In The Other Bennet Sister, Mary gets to visit the Lake District with the Gardiners, the trip for which Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice must substitute "a more contracted tour" to Derbyshire. During the tour of the Lakes there are incidents that recall Catherine Morland's rain-drenched expedition to Blaize Castle in Northanger Abbey and Marianne Dashwood's accident in Sense and Sensibility. And Quintrell carefully weaves in throughout the series moments that echo Mansfield Park, Emma, and Persuasion.

But The Other Bennet Sister is more than a pastiche of characters and scenes from Austen. In the series Mary is (largely) freed from the burdens of living with her belittling father and domineering, emotionally manipulative mother. While traveling and residing with her sympathetic aunt and uncle, and no longer subject to her parents' constant unfavorable comparisons of her to her prettier and more outgoing sisters, Mary slowly gains in self-confidence and self-knowledge. She grows beyond the character as imagined by Austen and as seen through the eyes of others in Pride and Prejudice. As Janice Hadlow writes in her novel, "There was no-one to judge her. Here, she thought, she might alter everything about herself if she wished to." [3]

The series is also unlike Austen and other Austen adaptations in the marked presence of people of South Asian heritage among the commercial and professional classes in London, among them Mr. Sparrow, Mrs. Gardiner, and the woman with whom Thomas Hayward has an understanding, Ann Baxter (a character not in Hadlow's novel, played by Varada Sethu). While such a prevalence would probably have been more characteristic of London at the end of the 19th century, decades after the Regency period in which The Other Bennet Sister takes place, it's a welcome reminder that Britain was then and remains now a multicultural society.

Richard Coyle (Mr. Gardiner) and Indira Varma (Mrs. Gardiner) in The Other Bennet Sister. Image source: Yours

Before seeing The Other Bennet Sister, I also thought that I knew how Mary's story would end. In A Memoir of Jane Austen, Jane's nephew James Austen-Leigh (her eldest brother James' son, who attended her funeral in Winchester as a 20-year-old) wrote of his aunt,

She certainly took a kind of parental interest in the beings whom she had created, and did not dismiss them from her thoughts when she had finished her last chapter. . .She would, if asked, tell us many little particulars about the subsequent career of some of her people. In this traditionary way we learned. . .that Kitty Bennet was satisfactorily married to a clergyman near Pemberley, while Mary obtained nothing higher than one of her uncle Philip's clerks, and was content to be considered a star in the society of Meriton. . . [4]

Title page of A Memoir of Jane Austen by her nephew J. E. Austen-Leigh, Third Edition, 1872. Image source: Internet Archive

I hope it's not a spoiler to inform you that this is not Mary's fate in The Other Bennet Sister. As novelist Jo Baker writes in her review of the novel, living with the Gardiners allows Mary to "let down her defences. . .[and] become comfortably herself." And with that new comfort in her own skin comes the possibility of true happiness. [5]

Many thanks to the dear friends who enabled us to see the series (and no, BritBox, no passwords were shared). We found it delightful, and were happy to learn that we can expect a three-part (90-minute?) Christmas special in December.

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1. Spoiler alerts!
   
   • Ulysses: The famous final words of Molly Bloom's novel-ending monologue are ". . .yes I said yes I will Yes."
   • Fred and Ginger: Their producer Pandro S. Berman once said, "The minute the names of Astaire and Rogers go up on the marquee, the audience knows they belong together." In fact, in only two of their musicals do they not end the movie as a romantic couple, and in those two films their characters are husband and wife: The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle (1939) and The Barkleys of Broadway (1948). They don't end these two films together due to an untimely death in the former, and an amicable divorce in the latter.
   • Tosca: Of the four major characters—the artist Mario Cavaradossi; his lover, the opera diva Floria Tosca; Cavaradossi's friend, the escaped political prisoner Cesare Angelotti; and the head of the police, Baron Scarpia—none survive the end of the opera: two die by suicide, one by murder, and one by firing squad. SF Opera apparently does not think that widespread advance knowledge of the fates of the characters is any detriment to the box office: including 2026–27, Tosca has been scheduled in eight of the past 26 seasons, or about once every three years.
   —End of spoilers.
2. Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Thomas Edgerton, 1813. Ch. VI, p. 52. https://archive.org/details/prideprejudiceno00aust_1/page/n61/mode/1up
3. Janice Hadlow, The Other Bennet Sister, Holt, 2020, Ch. 52.
4. J. E. Austen-Leigh, A Memoir of Jane Austen, Third Edition, Richard Bentley and Son, 1872, pp. 148–149; https://archive.org/details/memoirofjaneaus00aust/page/148/mode/2up. Exactly how Mary and her husband wind up living in Meryton, rather than in London where he is employed, is not explained, but Austen may have imagined that Mr. Gardiner would set up his clerk as a shopkeeper in the village on his marriage to Mary.
5. Jo Baker, "The Other Bennet Sister by Janice Hadlow review – what happened to Mary after Pride and Prejudice." The Guardian, 11 January 2020. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/11/the-other-bennet-sister-janice-hadlow-review