The Portland Oregonian reports that Portland Center Stage will produce an adaptation of Pride and Prejduice during their 2005-2006 season.

“Pride and Prejudice”: Marcus Goodwin’s adaptation was originally produced by Seattle’s Book-It Repertory Theatre in 2002. Director Jane Jones will work on a mostly bare stage with 14 actors. “I was so knocked out by the elegance and wit with which she put it together,” [artistic director Chris] Coleman says.

It will be performed at the Newmark Theatre, Oct. 25 through Nov. 20, 2005.

Hmm…now Portland, at only 150 miles from this Cub Reporter’s home, might be an enjoyable road trip, especially since I missed it in 2002 when it was produced 30 miles from my home.

Happily, the daughter of Pullitzer Prize winner and Austen biographer Carol Shields has followed in her mother’s footsteps and is also a Friend of Jane.

Anne Giardini, profiled in the London Times, relates this bittersweet memory of her mother, who died of breast cancer in 2003.

Writing, reading, children and work brought them together in a new kind of relationship. Their shared love of Jane Austen’s novels initiated an e-mail correspondence for a joint research paper entitled “Martians in Jane Austen”. They took John Gray’s archetypes about men being from Mars and women from Venus and applied them to the characters in her novels. “It was such fun and I thought it would be the first of many such projects,” Giardini says sadly.

Mrs. Giardini recently published her first novel, The Sad Truth About Happiness.

James Ley reviews The Moral of the Story: An Anthology of Ethics through Literature, edited by Peter Singer and Renata Singer.

In his review, Mr. Ley rightly points out an error the editors made in their analysis of Pride and Prejudice.

The editors have the good taste to include, for example, the scene from Pride and Prejudice in which Lady Catherine de Bourgh demands Elizabeth Bennet give her word that she will never marry Mr Darcy. According to The Moral of the Story, this scene raises the question: “Is a difference in social position ever a reason against marriage?”

Now, there is nothing wrong with this question. It is a good question. It is just that in Pride and Prejudice it is not up for debate. Austen’s novels are romantically inclined, of course, but they are built on the assumption that the answer is yes. Elizabeth believes in marrying for love, and she resists the attempt to put her in her place, but even she would agree that social position is inextricably bound up with the institution of marriage. After all, no one ever suggests she might wed the gardener. The question, quite transparently, springs from a contemporary sensibility. Naturally, this does not invalidate it as a question, but it is outside the concerns of the novel.

Perhaps, if I may be so bold, I might suggest that this mistaken opinion is one of Prof. Singer’s more harmless ones.

The South Bend Tribune reports that the Rev. Edward A. Malloy, president of the University of Notre Dame, is a Friend of Jane…er, or at least of the movies adapted from her novels.

Malloy said he planned to keep his comments brief, in part because of a tendency toward sentiment.

” ‘My Dog Skip’? I cried for 45 minutes,” Malloy said, referring to a children’s movie.

” ‘Pride and Prejudice,’ ‘Sense and Sensibility’ — chick flicks — I cry at them all the time,” he said, drawing chuckles from the audience.

Father Malloy spoke at a tribute dinner honoring his 18 years as president of Notre Dame. He will step down June 30.