The National Library of Scotland is attempting to secure a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund to purchase the archives of publisher John Murray, who was the first publisher of Emma, Persuasion and Northanger Abbey. The archive includes letters written by Jane Austen.

These days, the AustenBlog staff is often asked for our opinion of The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler, which is currently enjoying bestseller status, understandably piquing the curiosity of Janeites. We enjoyed the book very much, but many of our acquaintance, equally enthusiastic about the work of Jane Austen, were not as well pleased by it. For the still curious, we therefore present a positive (though short) review of the novel:

There is great social comedy in these stories.

…and a not-so-positive review of the novel:

The title alone — “The Jane Austen Book Club” — is enough for a winner, right? Ultimately, though, that’s all it is — a clever concept…The only thing this book does do is make the reader want to read Austen again.

Gracious. Scorch marks are so hard to get out of the chintz upholstery here at AustenBlog World Headquarters.

Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi has been optioned for film by Industry Entertainment, which is looking to Academy Award nominee Shohreh Aghdashloo to star:

Aleksandra Crapanzano will now adapt the screenplay centering on the life of Nafisi, who broke all the rules when she quit her job as a professor of literature at a Tehran university and invited several of her female students to attend study sessions at her house. There, the group would often read photocopied pages of illegal Western books, including works by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Jane Austen, and then discuss the political and social implications the works had on their own lives while living under the rule of the Ayatollah.

In an interview, graphic novel author Alan Moore talks about Jane Austen’s place in literary history:

Over here, the literary establishment is still running, as back in the days of Jane Austen, on the novel of manners, which she more or less invented. And, of course, they’re about the social intricacies of the middle class, who were also the only people at the time who could read or afford to buy the books. They were also the people who made up the book critics. And I think that, around this time, critics were so delighted by this new form of literature mirroring their own social interactions that they decided that not only was this true literature, but this was the only thing really that could be considered true literature. So all genre fiction, anything that really wasn’t a novel of manners in one form or another, was excluded from that definition.

A review of BRIDE AND PREJUDICE from Asians in Media:

The film is loud, stereotypical, and surprisingly, quite funny. That is of course what stereotypes are for. But the fact that Chadha manages to pull of the humour safely negates some of the bizarre sights, such as Indians singing out loud in English and Baywatch style bodyguards doing Indian dancing.

The AustenBlog staff found the accompanying photos delightful, especially the Mrs. Bennet character in the act of berating her daughters and the snobby-looking Miss Bingley. We are looking forward to the film and are sad to be on the wrong side of the pond to see it anytime soon.

An article in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel discusses writers who use dead writers’ work as their inspiration. The article brings up both The Jane Austen Book Club:

Although plenty of current books play off the work of dead writers, they’re not all cannibalistic. In some, authors are merely touchstones. The Jane Austen Book Club, set in contemporary California, uses conversations about Austen’s work as an excuse for its characters’ wailing about families and feelings; this middlebrow chick-lit owes more to Dr. Phil than to Pride and Prejudice.

…and, in rather less complimentary terms, of every Austen fan’s favorite, Emma Tennant:

Tennant alone is a one-woman literary cannibal tour. Before Sylvia and Ted appeared in 2001, she had written several sequels to Austen books, a novel based on a minor character from Jane Eyre and a memoir recalling her own affair with Ted Hughes.

We write, naturally, with tongue firmly tucked in cheek.

The Aurora Theater Company in Berkeley, California has announced its 2004-2005 season, which will include the West Coast premiere of “Jane Austen’s Emma,” adapted by Michael Fry and directed by Jeffrey Bihr, from November 12 to December 19, 2004.

In this fresh, sparkling theatrical adaptation, the classic novel’s web of characters is ingeniously spun by a cast of five. Though Austen herself described Emma as “a heroine whom no one but myself will much like,” the world and time have proven her wrong. Of this adaptation, Time Out wrote, “Jane Austen herself would surely applaud.”