The Bennets’ disappointment when their third child turns out to be a girl plagues Mary until she falls into teenage ‘melancholia’. Music becomes a path to friendship and romance and leads her out of the safe environment of her peers into the audacious company of the lower classes and on to the barbaric shores of New South Wales.

With Mary as narrator, the story is limited to her perspective, which – unlike Austen’s third-person account – is humourless and sober. Mary views many of the characters in a familiar light, but has a conflict with Elizabeth, whose role as heroine has now of course been appropriated. Of more interest are the developments of minor characters and Mary’s friendship with Cassandra Long, her sister Helen, and Maria Lucas.

The well-structured narrative, divided into bite-sized chapters, is driven by Mary’s romantic attachment to a musician, which adds an illicit frisson to her otherwise dull character.

The use of archaic vocabulary, though a little jarring, gives colour to the carefully researched narrative, rich in musical detail and bristling with tension between social classes. It is in the newly minted characters, the Bushell family in particular, that Paynter excels. Their arrival in Australia brings a fresh departure from the Austen classic. Perhaps they should have emigrated sooner.

The dovetailing of Pride and Prejudice, published in 1813, with the appointment of Macquarie as governor of New South Wales stamps the end of the story with a nice touch of verisimilitude.