A trailer for PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (2005) is now available at Yahoo! Movies. Our readers must, of course, make their own judgements, but this AustenBlog staff member must say that she is rather impressed.

ETA: Looks like the official site will be at www.prideandprejudicemovie.net. Nothing there yet, it just redirects to Focus Features.

The Guardian reports that Jane’s letter to Cassandra, in which she tells her that she has received a copy of Pride and Prejudice from her publisher in London, is now on display at Jane Austen’s House in Chawton.

The letter, written in January of 1813, contains the news in a long postscript:

“I want to tell you that I have got my own Darling Child from London … For your sake I am as well pleased that it shd be so, as it might be unpleasant to you to be in the Neighbourhood at the first burst of the business.”

The Darling Child was her own copy, hot from the publishers, of Pride and Prejudice. Sense and Sensibility had already been published two years earlier, and sold respectably. However, Pride and Prejudice, with the truth universally acknowledged that its opening sentence is one of the most parodied in fiction, would make her immortal: it regularly tops readers’ surveys of the best, and best loved, books of all time.

Congratulations again, Miss Austen.

The Jane Austen Centre at Bath has opened an exhibition called “Jane Austen, Nelson and the Navy in Bath.” According to the Centre’s website, “It establishes the connection between Britain’s favourite female author and the country’s greatest Naval hero who both lived for some time in England’s first ‘resort’.” The exhibition runs through the end of this year, and the link above contains a 10 percent discount voucher for the exhibit.

The Telegraph does an article on Ewan McGregor with a brief mention of his appearance in Emma2:

With the exception of his preparation for Trainspotting, he also does not really go in for research. When, in 1995, he arrived on the set of Emma (in which he was a forgettable Frank Churchill in a ‘bloody ridiculous wig’), he made no secret of the fact that he had not read the Jane Austen novel. ‘I like to be in the moment that I am creating,’ he explains. ‘If I have to draw on other things that aren’t in that moment, it takes me out of it. I like to use my imagination to put me in that position then and there, in front of the camera.’

We generally refer to it as “phoning it in,” but we do not pretend to be an expert. *meow*

The Wellesley Summer Theatre Company (associated with Wellesley College in Massachusetts) will be staging a production of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE throughout June. Tickets can be reserved online.

The Kechi Playhouse in Wichita, Kansas, will be staging THE LAST OF JANE AUSTEN from September 1 through 25. We have no idea what the play is about; the linked article describes it only as a comedy. The Kechi Playhouse Web site is not up to date, but there is a phone number to call for more information.

A study into reading habits by gender concluded that men generally don’t read books by women–with one understandable exception:

‘Pressed for a preference, many men also found it much more difficult to “like” or “admire” a novel authored by a woman - for them “great” writing was male writing (oh - apart from Jane Austen, of course),’ the report said.

From a fashion article in the Financial Times:

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a writer in search of a catchy intro will inevitably end up plagiarising Jane Austen. But it’s also a truth, and one that’s pretty well accepted, that when it comes to the spring, our thoughts will inevitably turn to flowers and blossoms - with or without the aid of a literary classic.

Ha!

Liza Featherstone writes about Emma in Newsday.

This won’t surprise you if you’ve recently been anywhere near a playground: For two years running, Emma has been the second most popular name for a baby girl born in the United States (just after Emily). For devotees of Jane Austen’s eponymous novel, this might seem curious; when Austen began writing “Emma,” she declared, “I am going to take a heroine who nobody but myself will very much like.”

Alert AustenBlog Reader Cinthia wrote to tell us of some new P&P3 links that she saw at The Republic of Pemberley: film stills from a Danish site and a clip about Focus Features that has a few seconds of footage from the film. (Click on Media, then About Focus, then Focus Reel, and choose your desired media viewer and clip size.) The P&P footage is about halfway through and is only a few seconds, but it’s something! (Also there’s a Lizzy/Darcy near-snog moment near the end of the clip!) Thanks, Cinthia!

ETA: More photos here and here.

ETA: KeiraWeb.com has extracted the P&P portion into its own clip, and also provided screencaps from the clip. Please remember to right click and save as!

Alert AustenBlog Reader Sumita went to the event at Coliseum Books in New York City today featuring Karen Joy Fowler, the author of The Jane Austen Book Club. Sumita was kind enough to send us a report and a photo from the event. (more…)

Alert AustenBlog Reader Lorraine sent us an article from the Telegraph about literary adaptations on television. While the article does not mention Austen adaptations, it is obvious that the popularity of certain adaptations *cough* have swelled the ranks of Jane Austen readers, and fans.

Many who will never read George Eliot’s novels are now familiar with a version - a dilution, if you prefer - of Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda through their television adaptations. Penguin books will have sold few copies of Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South over the past 10 years, but perhaps they have sold more since the BBC’s recent adaptation, and it seems certain that many more people learnt about love across the Victorian social divide by watching the television dramatisation than would ever have picked up the novel itself. This was achieved, previously, for Brideshead Revisited and The Forsyte Saga.

We tend to assume that publishing is a gentle and gentlemanly backwater, a place of erudition and good taste, while television is a frenzied world of commercial fears and dumbing-down in freefall. Well, publishing has its own piranha pools these days, and the Patrick Hamilton case proves that television can be a leading force in the preservation of cultural values and high quality. They each have their opponents, their charters, their traditions, their bottom lines, but literature and television may find, in the end, that they can make it through these rough times only by taking proper and regular lessons in populism and seriousness from one another.

There are many Janeites who bemoan the presence of the “movie people” among serious Austen scholars, but anyone who came into the fandom during the mid-90s Austen adaptation frenzy and is still hanging around is a pretty serious fan, we think. It is expected in many quarters that the upcoming film version of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE will bring in another wave of new Austen fans. Some will stay, and some will move on to the next big thing. In the end, we still have the books.

“Jane Austen’s Emma” is the current presentation at the Haymarket Theatre in Basingstoke. Janeites who have read Austen biographies know that Jane Austen and her sister attended public assemblies in Basingstoke, which is close to the village of Steventon. The play runs only through May 28 (sorry for the late notice, but this is the first we are hearing of it!) so be quick if you would like to see it; and as always, if you go, we’d love to publish your review.

Author Tobias Wolff and singer Alicia Keys have both confessed in the public press that Jane Austen is on their reading list.

Ms. Keys told Mercury News that she is currently reading Pride and Prejudice.

Q You mentioned books. What are you reading right now?

A I’m reading Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” right now.

Q Have you read that before?

A I haven’t. I’ve always wanted to read that.

That’s how it started with the Editrix, too (though she picked up Emma first). The first hit’s free, Alicia!

Tobias Wolff, author of This Boy’s Life among other works, has included Jane Austen on his summer reading list.

Tobias Wolff, author of, among other things, “Old School,” brings big Victorian novels on his summer vacations, so long as he is not backpacking.

“What I read in the summer are books that I don’t have time to read during the year,” he says.

He recommends: “I am going to reread Leo Tolstoy’s ‘Anna Karenina.’ There is a new translation of it that I want to read. I am going to read ‘Vanity Fair,’ by William Thackeray. I also want to read several novels of Jane Austen’s this summer. Then I have a bunch of history books that I would like to read as well.”

To fluff or not to fluff: “I don’t read fluff, simply because I don’t enjoy it.”

Well, we like fluff. Just not all the time! (And a word to the wise, Mr. Wolff: read the Austen, THEN the Thackeray. Trust us.)

My reviews of the other books in this series can be read here.

As the eighth book in the Jane Austen Mysteries series opens, it is July 1809, and Jane and her mother have arrived in Chawton to take possession of the cottage in which Edward Austen’s late bailiff lived. Village sentiment is against the squire’s womenfolk displacing the bailiff’s widow, and when a corpse is discovered in the cellar within a few hours of their arrival, suspicion falls on several neighbours who have a score to settle with the Austens—or with one another.

(The rest of this review contains a major spoiler for the previous book in this series, Jane and the Ghosts of Netley. We find it impossible to write a proper review without reference to it.) (more…)

Karen Joy Fowler, author of The Jane Austen Book Club, will be appearing at the Reading Room at Bryant Park in New York City on Wednesday, May 25 at 12:30 p.m.. The Reading Room is located on the 42nd Street side between 5th and 6th Streets Avenues across from Coliseum Books, which is co-sponsoring the event as part of its Word for Word lunchtime series. In case of rain, the event will be moved to the Coliseum Books Café. If any AustenBlog readers go, please post a report!

Also, the Kentucky Leader-Herald has chosen The Jane Austen Book Club as its next reading group selection.

…that someone would bring up Bridget Jones (and Mr. Darcy) vis-a-vis Renée Zellweger’s recent surprise wedding to country singer Kenny Chesney.

If Bridget Jones had been obliged to summarise the day’s events in her diary, she would surely have written, “Bloody hell! Hurrah!”

In the real world, the marriage came as a surprise.

Zellweger, with her history of failed romances, had been waiting for some time for her own Mr Darcy to sweep her off her feet.

Chesney — wealthy, handsome and successful — may not rival Colin Firth in a pair of breeches (or reindeer jumper) but he certainly fits the bill.

However, we cannot imagine Mr. Darcy consenting to be married in bare feet. Best wishes to the happy couple.

Thanks to Alert AustenBlog Reader Lorraine for the link!

A review of the Jane Fonda/Jennifer Lopez film MONSTER-IN-LAW compares it to Pride and Prejudice.

P.S. FOR TEENS: The conflict between a would-be daughter-in-law and her fiance’s mother in “Monster-in-Law” is an age-old theme in comedy, drama and real-life — an overly possessive parent believing no one is good enough for her child. Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice,” written nearly 200 years ago, has wonderful scenes between the heroine, Elizabeth Bennet, and Mr. Darcy’s snooty aunt (his parents are dead). The lady disapproves of the middle-class Elizabeth and fears her aristocratic nephew may want to marry beneath his station.

No comment.

Samuel Kozlowski posted a comment in the thread about the Canadian release of P&P3. He was an extra in the film. Hopefully he will come back and tell us some interesting stories about the filming. We think it is a good sign when the extras had fun!

We heard from Leslie Carroll, the author of upcoming Austen paraliterature about which we posted previously. Ms. Carroll said that the book will now be called By a Lady: Being the Adventures of An Enlightened American in Jane Austen’s England and will be published under the pen name she uses for her historical fiction, Amanda Elyot. The book will be released in the spring of 2006.

As posted previously, the book is about an actress portraying Jane Austen in a stage play who travels back in time to meet the author.

An earlier incarnation of part of the book was published on USAToday.com, titled Jane Austen Unzipped. “Many elements of the JANE AUSTEN UNZIPPED serialization are not in the final version of the [By A Lady] manuscript that will be published next year,” Ms. Carroll wrote. She also noted that like BECOMING JANE, the Jane Austen biopic currently in preproduction, the book has Jane Austen’s relationship with Tom Lefroy as part of the story.