Extracts from Fiction

Alice experiences for herself the very definition of a pointless exercise.

Alice and an assortment of animals have got very wet. A mouse tries to dry them out by reciting a passage from a dry history book, but when this doesn’t work, the Dodo suggests a Caucus Race.

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The cup of happiness is dashed from Jane Eyre’s lips.

Mr Rochester has proposed to his astonished but delighted governess, Jane Eyre, and the happy couple are now in church, ready to exchange their marriage vows.

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The people of Lilliput are strangely small, but their ideas are bizarre in a big way.

Lemuel Gulliver has been carried on a strange journey to unknown peoples and cultures, which has now brought him to Lilliput, where the people are barely six inches high.

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A touchy subject, especially when your lover is listening in.

Captain Wentworth once proposed to Anne Eliott, but to her lasting regret her family persuaded her to reject him. Years later, Captain Wentworth is eavesdropping while Anne tells a friend, Captain Harville, that men soon forget such disappointments.

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Fanny Price, eight years after being adopted by her wealthy uncle and aunt, has gone back home for the first time, full of anticipation.

At ten years of age, Fanny Price was taken by her wealthy uncle and aunt to live in Mansfield Park, a country house. Now eighteen, she has gone back home to Portsmouth for the first time, eager to meet her own family once more. They, however, do not seem quite as eager to meet her.

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First impressions prove to be quite misleading in the case of handsome, disagreeable Mr Darcy.

The Bennet family’s near-neighbours, Mr Bingley and Mr Darcy, make an appearance at their first dance in Meryton, and public opinion upon them and their London relatives swings bewilderingly to and fro.

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