Mary Bennet got a raw deal. Jane Austen described Pride and Prejudice ’s middle child as “the only plain one” of the five sisters, “who worked hard for knowledge and accomplishments, was always impatient for display.” Yet, Austen hastened to add, “Mary had neither genius nor taste; and though vanity had given her application, it had given her likewise a pedantic air and conceited manner, which would have injured a higher degree of excellence than she had reached.” Ouch. Even the compliments she receives feel backhanded. She has a reputation as “the most accomplished girl in the neighborhood.” Why not just say she has a good personality? But Austen-adjacent fiction —particularly works derived from Pride and Prejudice —has long been a cottage industry unto itself, and several of those stories cast a revisionist eye on the most maligned Bennet girl. Is it really so bad to be bookish?…