AustLit

'“If a separated man – about to be divorced – is in possession of a good fortune, must he be in want of a new wife?” So Susan Johnson rewrites Jane Austen’s opening sentence from Pride and Prejudice, declaring her new novel, The Landing, to be a domestic comedy about marriage and marriage-like relationships. If Austen’s arch “truth universally acknowledged” drew attention to the urgent need of women in the nineteenth century for the financial support of a man, then Johnson’s question draws attention to significant differences in early twenty-first-century Australia.' (Introduction)