AustenBlog passed ten thousand visitors while Your Gentle Editor wasn’t looking (sorry, busy weekend!)

I’d like to take this opportunity to slip out of editorial mode and say to our visitors: thank you for the warm reception we have received amongst the online Jane Austen community and for all the news and reviews and links you have sent our way. Thank you also to all the kind folks who have linked to the weblog and promoted it. We are happy to have you all here and we hope to keep you all apprised of the latest Jane Austen news as well as other interesting references to Jane Austen in popular culture that we run across. We hope you are having fun here, because we sure are.

Boy, even Mr. Darcy’s scared of the Janeites!

Matthew Macfadyen tells the New Zealand Herald that he knows the Colin Firth fans will be watching his performance as Mr. Darcy very carefully.

He plays the lead character, which many will forever associate with Colin Firth from the television adaptation of a decade ago, opposite Keira Knightley. “I’ve been wearing sideburns on a horse and looking very brooding and everything. I can’t really take myself seriously as Darcy but they are all pleased, so hopefully it will come out okay.”

Those are quite some britches to fill …

“Yes, the knives will be out.”

Yes, but Mr. Darcy shouldn’t care.

Incidentally, our contact at Focus Features warned that there will not be much P&P3 news now that the film has wrapped until sometime next year, as the publicity machine starts to warm up. The AustenBlog staff will, of course, keep our readers up to date on everything we come across.

Gurinder Chadha reveals that she anticipated the screening of BRIDE AND PREJUDICE at the Jane Austen Festival with some trepidation, and was pleased with the reception:

Going head to head with the world’s largest film industry was small fry compared to her latest confrontation, however. After a screening in India for Bollywood directors like Karan Johar (“He said: ‘I’ve learnt a lot today about how to make my films more accessible’”), Chadha flew to Bath to face her ultimate nemesis – the Jane Austen Society.

“That was hysterical,” she laughs. “It was the closing night of the Jane Austen festival, so there were all these people in their bonnets and top hats and Regency clothes. My husband Paul [Berges, who co-wrote Bend It Like Beckham], asked them what they expected and they said, ‘Oh, lots of colour and excitement’, and then one woman said, ‘I hope she’s true to Jane Austen’s work. I hope she hasn’t meddled with it too much’.

“I started by saying, ‘This film isn’t based on Pride And Prejudice, it’s not adapted, it’s inspired by’, which is a good get-out clause. But they really enjoyed it. Lots of people said how incredibly true to the book it was but it was a completely different world. And I think that was what was amazing to them. That you can still be true to Jane Austen’s themes and characters but set it in a contemporary world.’”

Karen Joy Fowler, author of The Jane Austen Book Club, talks about her love for Jane and her favorite novels in The Age.

“I love Austen because her voice is so intimate in a way. It’s an amazing tightrope act that she does. She manages to make you feel like you’re right there with her and yet when you put the book down you know nothing about her, none of her opinions.

“It’s an extremely distanced and yet intimate voice.”

She is hard pressed to pick a favourite Austen novel. “I truly love them all,” she says fervently. “My favourites rotate between Pride and Prejudice, Emma and Persuasion.

“Although it has become clear to me as I’ve done more research that all of the smartest people pick Northanger Abbey as the best, so maybe I should start including that one.”

The Rev. Mr. Tilney would like to concur.

The Toronto Star muses, upon the occasion of the publication of Philip Roth’s latest novel, whether it is not better for an author to retire at the top of his or her game. The article wonders about Jane Austen and the Brontës, and whether their work would have suffered had they lived long enough:

Jane Austen wrote nothing but masterpieces. She died at the age of 41, however. What if she had lived to be 70 or 80? Would she have found herself repeating the old formula? Emily and Charlotte Bronte were blazing talents while they lived. But neither sister lived to be 40. If they, too, had survived to a ripe old age, would they have tried to keep the flame going by creating ever more ludicrous versions of Heathcliff and Mr. Rochester?

We are convinced that, had Jane finished Sanditon (and not been ill while writing it), it would have been her best work yet. Beyond that, it is hard to say.

An essay in the New York Times about literary Web sites zeroes in on one of the more notorious pieces of Jane Austen fan fiction at Fanfiction.net: the infamous Darcy/Wickham slash piece.

You probably finished ”Pride and Prejudice” thinking, ”That was fine, but I’d have liked at least one hot encounter between Darcy and Wickham, especially if it involved exposed chests and a healthy slathering of cheap cologne.” Reader, they’ve written it.

Another site mentioned is Godawful Fan Fiction, not coincidentally related to the above, because they’ve skewered the Darcy/Wickham slash. (Unladylike Language Warning, though if you’re reading the slash anyway, a few Bad Words probably aren’t going to throw you.)

While the AustenBlog staff enjoys fandom wankage as much as anyone, we could not help but wonder why a whole weblog dedicated to Jane Austen doesn’t even merit a mention in this article, though of course the allure of Darcy/Wickham slash and cheap cologne cannot be overlooked, one supposes.