Jerome Weeks of the Dallas Morning News writes an article about romance novels, including Regency romances, and their relation to the work of Jane Austen:

Jane Austen actually lived during the Regency – and invented the witty romance with her masterpieces – but she didn’t write Regencies. She wrote what, for her, were contemporaries.

The distinction, Pamela Regis says, is that Austen didn’t use her era the way Regency romances do. Dr. Regis, who teaches English at McDaniel College in Maryland, is the author of A Natural History of the Romance Novel.

The setting, she argues, is more than coach and candelabra: “The Regency is an era of glittering corruption.” The novel’s love affair typically involves an aristocratic rogue (who, of course, is never really a rogue and therefore gets suitably cleaned up for the wedding). But by the end, the emotional values of the couple stand in contrast to the era’s dissipation.

“When romances can explore a setting,” Dr. Regis says, “and set the lovers against the values of that setting, they get stronger.”

We were reminded of another interesting link: The Alberta Burke Notebooks at Goucher College’s Julia Rogers Library. Mrs. Burke was an inveterate collecter of Austeniana, including newspaper clippings mentioning Jane Austen, which she pasted into notebooks and eventually bequeathed to Goucher College. The notebooks from the early 1940s contain many clippings about (go figure) the first film version of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE. The AustenBlog editorial staff senses a kindred spirit in Mrs. Burke and encourages all Janeites to check out the site. It is a fascinating look at one Janeite’s view of Jane Austen in popular culture.

For all those AustenBlog visitors who are perhaps a trifle sick of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE filming news, we found an interesting link in our travels that we thought might be of interest: an electronic version of Jane Austen, Her Homes and Her Friends by Constance Hill, first published in 1901, from the University of Pennsylvania’s Celebration of Woman Writers.

KeiraWeb.com reports that filming of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE has moved from Burghley House to Groombridge Place in Kent, the location for Longbourn, and will remain there through mid-August.

In other location news, the screenwriter of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, Deborah Moggach, wrote on her Web site (click on July ‘04) that Chatsworth will be the location for Pemberley.

Apparently it’s going to be all shot on location, with Chatsworth being Pemberley and that house in “The Draughtman’s Contract” becoming Netherfield.

We have not seen any studio confirmation of this anywhere, but it is a persistent claim on various Web sites. The IMDB lists Groombridge Place as the shooting location for THE DRAUGHTMAN’S CONTRACT.