There has been a Darcy-shaped hole in every woman’s heart since 1813 when Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice was first published.
For the last 17 years he's looked remarkably like Colin Firth, ever since the actor emerged from the water in a tight wet shirt in the BBC adaptation.
But what would Jane Austen think about this if she were here? Is Colin Firth her Mr. Darcy?
Until recently, we’d never have known. But thanks to writer and artist Brian Joseph Davis the mystery can now be solved.
Davis’s most recent project, The Composites, uses character descriptions from literature and police composite sketch software to create seemingly accurate images of characters’ faces.
“I love using technology not considered to be art, as art. I had been reading a lot of crime books this year and something got the idea crossed in my brain about the unreliability of witness descriptions and police art and literary character description,” Davis told The Huffington Post.
All of the characters in the series, from Nabokov’s Humbert Humbert to Flaubert’s Emma Bovary, are marked with some degree of criminality. But we think we can cast the net a bit wider.
It would be interesting to see - as with Colin Firth and Mr Darcy - how close directors have stuck to the original works when casting. Is Tim Robbins Stephen King’s Andy Dufresne? Is Anne Hathaway David Nicholls’ Emma?
Which characters from fiction would you like to see? Check out more of Davis' portraits, then let us know below.