Lending Library: A Pride and Prejudice Variation

They knew each other's minds for fourteen months before they knew each other's names.Meryton's lending library runs a quiet letter-exchange programme, matching readers anonymously by interest and temperament. Elizabeth Bennet applies because she wants someone to argue with. Her match signs himself only F. For fourteen months, F has been the most honest correspondent she has ever had.She has not met him. She does not know his name. She knows the quality of his thinking, the way he finds the question inside her arguments and hands it back, and the specific satisfaction of being understood by someone who cannot yet see her.Then Bingley takes Netherfield. His friend arrives with him. And Elizabeth Bennet argues with Mr. Darcy of Pemberley about a lending library at the first assembly, and does not realise she has been writing to him for over a year.Neither of them does. Not yet.For readers who have ever been better on paper than in person...