The Guardian says that the 25th anniversary edition of the London Review of Books contains an article by the critic James Wood on Jane Austen.
Bless us for our sins. A review of an autobiography of novelist Anthony Powell in the New York Times opines that having too much fun with a novelist’s work diminishes the importance of that work.
As hobbies go, literary cultism is innocent enough, but it does have a way of diminishing the perceived importance of its objects. It’s one thing to play games with Sherlock Holmes, another to do it with Jane Austen. Besides, the mere fact that a novelist’s works lend themselves to trivial pursuits is bound to make his ultimate seriousness suspect.
We are firmly of the opinion that Jane Austen would have approved of our innocent fun, and that we still take her work quite seriously indeed.
A quotation from Sense and Sensibility was included in an article on retirement planning (including annuities) in the Scotsman.
JANE Austen cannot have foreseen how many of us would be living well into our nineties when she wrote in Sense and Sensibility that “an annuity is a very serious business; it comes over and over each year and there is no getting rid of it”.
Considering that several members of Jane Austen’s family lived into their nineties, we dare say she did indeed foresee it.
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