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Amelia Blackwell is the author of A Crime Through Time: Miss Darcy Investigates, out now from Pan Macmillan. Below, she considers what Jane Austen would think of Georgiana Darcy as an amateur detective in a cozy mystery novel. Like most writers, Jane Austen was keen to make money from her work. If she were alive in 2026, I like to imagine her publishing a slew of cosy crime novels and earning a fortune from her books, certainly more than the ÂŁ668 that historian Lucy Worsley reports Austen to have made from publication of the four novels that were released during her lifetime, in a period when the average solicitor could expect to earn an annual income of ÂŁ1500, overtaking Austen’s total lifetime earnings in just six months. Austen’s mix of gentle humour, razor-sharp characterisation, and clever plotting conjures worlds that perfectly lend themselves to cosy mysteries—passions swirl beneath a tranquil surface, little is said but much is felt, and all that unspoken tension, lust, and ambition is the perfect stage for a crime. Sadly for …



