New Yahoo Group for P&P3 Discussion
For those of you who can’t get enough P&P3, Alert Janeite Marybeth wrote to tell us that she has started a Yahoo Group specifically for discussion of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE 2005.
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21 July 2005
More on J.K. Rowling and Jane Austen
Alert Janeite Marybeth sent us a link to an interview with J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter novels and Friend of Jane, in which she mentions Jane Austen.
Zoe Brennan for The Sun - If you could choose to be anyone in history, who would you be and why?
JK Rowling: Anyone in history?
Yeah.
JK Rowling: Oh gosh. You see, the people I admire most, people like Jane Austen, I do not think had particularly happy lives, so I would not really want to live their lives. Then you could be selfish and choose to be someone like Henry the 8th who lived for pleasure, but I would not want to do that either.
To be honest with you, I am a very happy person, I can’t think of anyone I would rather be at the moment.
Well, we like to think Jane’s life was not exactly terrible, but she probably would have liked a bit of Ms. Rowling’s dosh. 
Alert Janeite Sophia J also sent us a link to the following quote by J.K. Rowling.
Jane Austen is the pinnacle to which all other authors aspire.
Pretty much, yes.
P.S. For those who have read Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: Ginny Weasley is Anne Elliot. Discuss. 
AustenBlog Analog
We have posted this link in the past, but newer AustenBlog readers may not have seen it, and we would not want anyone to miss it.
The Alberta Burke Notebooks at Goucher College is a fascinating site for Janeites. Mrs. Burke was a lifelong collector of Austeniana. From the 1930s through 1973, Mrs. Burke kept notebooks in which she pasted articles about Jane Austen and anything to do with Jane Austen in popular culture–including many articles about P&P0, the Broadway musical version of P&P, etc. There is also correspondence with dealers from which she bought letters written by Jane Austen, first editions of the novels (Emma, uncut and in boards, for £135, and a first edition of NA for SEVEN POUNDS. We are not making this up). She bequeathed the notebooks to the Julia Rogers Library of Goucher College, which has imaged the notebooks and other materials and placed them online.
Mrs. Burke’s husband, Henry, was one of the founders of the Jane Austen Society of North America.
Be warned, one can spend hours browsing this fascinating collection!
