Anne de Bourgh is an enigmatic figure in Jane Austen’s wildly popular Pride and Prejudice. Austen tells us relatively little about Anne, but now Molly Greeley imagines Anne’s life in this rich period novel. As a fussy baby, Anne de Bourgh’s doctor prescribed laudanum to quiet her, and she still must take the opium-heavy syrup daily. Pale and far too slender, Anne’s sharp mind races in the morning, but quiets into lethargy after her noontime dose. Her parents keep her from other children, except for her cousins, including Fitzwilliam Darcy. Darcy, it is understood, will marry Anne and combine his vast estate of Pemberley with the de Bourgh estate, Rosings. But when her father dies unexpectedly, Anne, suddenly a wealthy heiress, has a dark glimmer of understanding: what if her life of fragility and illness isn’t truly real? What if she could free herself from the medicine she’s been told she can’t live without? Utterly inexperienced but suddenly wide awake to the world, Anne must now forge a new identity for herself.