…and it’s in Nashua, New Hampshire.

We are sure there are more such clubs…in fact, the Editrix belongs to one. Feel free to send us your meeting notices!

We previously reported that a Jane Austen Birthday Tea was to be held yesterday in Omaha, Nebraska. It seems as though a good time was had by all. After all, what is a Jane Austen Birthday Tea without charades?

The Seattle Times celebrates the return of the movie musical, including BRIDE AND PREJUDICE–but with a troubling caveat:

Gurinder Chadha’s “Bride and Prejudice” (originally scheduled for December, but recently bumped to Valentine’s Day weekend — too many musicals?) is a Bollywood-style remake of the Jane Austen novel, complete with song and dance.

There’s that opening-day delay rumor again…and it looks like it’s official. (Private from the Editrix to Mr. Harvey “John Thorpe” Weinstein: Thanks for finally updating the Web site so we can make our holiday-season plans. Took you long enough.)

J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy edged out Pride and Prejudice in the “My Favorite Book” competition sponsored by the Australian broadcasting network ABC.

Debrett’s Peerage & Baronetage–yes, that Baronetage–has been sold to a company that plans to bring out Debrett’s-branded lifestyle magazines.

Debrett’s is the oldest reference book on the UK’s aristocracy, with origins that can be traced back to before the French Revolution and the American Declaration of Independence. John Debrett certainly stole a march on John Burke, who did not publish his Peerage until 1826.

As early as 1818, author Jane Austen was mocking the upper classes’ love of seeing their names in print with her portrait of Sir Walter Elliot of Kellynch Hall.

He never took up any book but the Baronetage, she writes at the beginning of Persuasion. There he found occupation for an idle hour and consolation for a distressed one.

Sir Walter clearly set the tone for the modern-day obsession with celebrity.

We can only guess what he would have to say about the new owners’ plans for putting Debrett’s branded lifestyle magazines on the newsstands.

We dare say that he would not think much of these new creations.

On the Radio 4 program (guess we should spell it “programme,” considering) “Woman’s Hour,” a panel of experts and a live audience will choose the book that “has most changed women’s lives and influenced how men see the fairer sex.” Pride and Prejudice is on the shortlist of 30 books.

The Washington Post points out that books are always the right size and quite easy to wrap, including one that will have particular interest for Janeites:

Richard Jenkyns’s A Fine Brush on Ivory (Oxford Univ., $25) is subtitled “An Appreciation of Jane Austen,” which sounds rather lightweight, a work of breezy, David Cecil-like nonchalance. But Jenkyns — a professor of classical tradition — offers telling observations throughout his engrossing short book: “The distinctive feature of Pride and Prejudice is the number of its subplots, knit into one another with confident mastery. The abundance of anecdote and episode in the book — the sheer amount of things happening — is a part of its vitality; it is a means of imparting the ethos of sparkling comedy.” Elsewhere, Jenkyns points out that Persuasion is “that great rarity, a novel which is too short.” He goes on to say that we really need to live through Anne Elliott’s “lonely endurance” more extensively than the book allows us to and that the “reawakening of Wentworth’s love for her” should have been a more gradual process.

That’s why the gods of literature gave us fan fiction!

Heh. A fortunate journalist has the opportunity to interview the stars of BRIDGET JONES: THE EDGE OF REASON and writes the article in v. amusing manner of Bridget’s diary.

Things I will not do:

– ask Hugh if he shaved chest for very sexy topless scene in Thai bathhouse.

– ask Colin if he practices arrogant-locked-jaw-melts-into-puppydog-eyes thing in the mirror every morning.

– forget to talk to Renée as she is star of movie.

We think these are excellent aspirations for an enterprising journalist.

Colin Firth revealed some inside info on playing Darcy, both Fitzwilliam and Mark:

But like Grant, Firth was nervous about donning the mantle of his character once again, in this case the stoic Mark Darcy. “It’s not a safe bet at all,” he says. “There’s a long way to fall.”

Darcy, he says, is an archetype, and that is difficult to portray twice. “His main characteristic is being unknowable,” he says. “And so it’s hard to develop him — you want to show a little bit more but you can’t give too much away.

Many of Firth’s roles are along the unknowable, archetypal lines — from Pride and Prejudice to the more recent Girl With a Pearl Earring, he often plays the tense, silent types whose repressed passion is mistaken for arrogance only to be revealed in heart-stopping splendor in the last act.

“I do tend to simmer,” he says, laughing.

Gee, ya think?

As Bridget did before her, Our Enterprising Journalist discovers that life of top journalist is no walk in the park:

Catch Colin’s eye three times in a row. V. embarrassing. Want to tell him am Serious Journalist observing Interplay of Famous Performers not wallflower staring at Man Who Played Darcy.

Oh, honey. We feel your pain.