We received word today that The Democratic Genre: Fan Fiction in a Literary Context by Sheenagh Pugh will go on sale August 1. In this book, Professor Pugh, a lecturer at the University of Glamorgan and a renowned poet, concentrates on the fan fiction of several fandoms, including Jane Austen. From Professor Pugh:

I wrote this book to show how fan fiction fitted into a long tradition of canon writing and how it had evolved today. Friends within the community, and many writers I didn’t know, gave me their co-operation, which is why I’ve been able to quote so much, not only fiction but writers’ observations on how they work.

I’ve discussed all manner of fandoms, including Austen, Hornblower, Blakes 7, Discworld, The Bill, Lord of the Rings, Sherlock Holmes and others too numerous to mention. Gen, het, slash, metafic, fan poetry, serial stories, drabbles. If you want to read about the workings of the Live Kennedy Universe, J K Rowling’s attitude to fan fiction or the effect of the Trousers of Time on character death in Discworld fic, it’s here. As are parallels between the way profic and fanfic writers use drabbles, play intertextual games and discuss male vulnerability.

Disclaimer: the Editrix is one of the authors quoted in the book. Dorothy has a space on the bookshelf all ready for it, with a little vase of fresh flowers beside. We are trying to ascertain if the book will be available from Amazon.com and Amazon.ca, so stay tuned.

Alert Janeite Laura sent us links to several other upcoming books of interest: nonfiction, paraliterature, audiobooks, and more. Jane is hot right now!

The movie tie-in version of P&P will be out from Penguin on September 27. No cover art yet.

We have written previously about By a Lady : Being the Adventures of an Enlightened American in Jane Austen’s England, but now you can check out the cover art, which is quite lovely and a clever concept.

Sex and Sensibility by Rosemarie Santini will be out on September 15.

A Jane Austen–obsessed heroine navigates life and love in Santini’s sprightly third novel. Raised by a feminist mother who preached independence and a romantic father who called her Princess, Lizzie Parsons, as an adult, spends her days crunching out film reviews for a Manhattan newspaper and her nights worshipping Jane Austen with fellow “JANO” members who believe that recreating the decorum of Austen’s novels is the only way to live. Lizzie also struggles between two alluring men—Gabriel, a fellow JANO (Jane-o-holics) member, and Harry, her should-be-off-limits boss who reminds her of Austen’s Fitzwilliam Darcy.

Well, of course he does.

For all those who long for a film version of Da Man (how about this guy, O Cultists? No jokes about his name, now), we can at least give you a stage version adapted by Tim Luscombe, which will be out on September 1.

For you Janeite foodies, Cooking With Jane Austen by Kirstin Olsen might be right up your alley. The price is a bit steep, but think of how cool it will be to serve Dishes That Jane Would Have Eaten at your next dinner party!

Shoes to Die For, the latest Jaine Austen Mystery (that is not a typo) by Laura Levine, is out. We read the first book of this series and it really doesn’t have much to do with Jane Austen (no i) except for some bad jokes and a plot that lightly echoes P&P.

From the Department of Oh No She Did Not Go There, we have Austen’s Unbecoming Conjunctions : Subversive Laughter, Embodied History by Jill Heydt-Stevenson.

This new work investigates the role that dissident comedy plays in Austen’s writings. Using sexuality as a lens upon circa-1800 literary culture, this book emphasizes the physical life of Austen’s heroines, and contributes to recent analyses of popular culture and material history.

An excerpt:

In Pride and Prejudice, Lydia intimates that her virginity has already been lost when, on the eve of eloping with a scoundrel, she explains that “I shall send for my clothes when I get to Longbourn; but I wish you would tell Sally to mend a great slit in my worked muslin gown, before they are packed up” (291-292).

Is she alluding to what we think she is alluding to?! Oh, my. But the book sounds fascinating nonetheless.

The late Carol Shields’ Penguin biography of Jane Austen is out in paperback.

Another re-release (and about time) is Maggie Lane’s excellent Jane Austen’s World, for which used booksellers have been getting outrageously high sums since it has been out of print. We hope that the new edition is as lavishly and beautifully illustrated as the old version. The new edition will be out September 1.

Brilliance Audio is releasing new unabridged audiobook versions of Jane Austen’s novels, including Pride and Prejudice and Emma.

Some upcoming scholarly works on Jane Austen and her novels are Jane Austen’s Philosophy of the Virtues by Sarah Emsley and Jane Austen’s Textual Lives: From Aeschylus to Bollywood by Kathryn Sutherland.

To cap things off in a rousing manner, we have the latest offering from Debra White Smith’s “Austen Series,” Northpointe Chalet. There is an excerpt at the publisher’s Web site. Can you say “bad fan fiction?” We thought you could.

We will add these links and some others to the sidebar later, but right now we are for our bed, perhaps to dream of a blue-eyed Henry Tilney. We are so subversive.