No real P&P3 news today, though the film is mentioned in several of the articles already posted. However, we have a few tidbits for the slavering hordes enthusiastic fans.

Paul from KeiraWeb.com sent us a link to an auction of the P&P3 press pack. Bidding, unfortunately, has ended (sorry we didn’t get this link up sooner!) But more of the same will no doubt be available soon, and much of it is on the web anyway.

Paul also sent an article from the Daily Mirror in which the newly-single Miss Knightley squees over Matthew Macfadyen as Darcy and also let out another interesting tidbit about her casting.

Her love-life may be in tatters but Keira can console herself with a burgeoning film career. Starring with Spooks star Matthew McFadyen in a new film version of Jane Austen’s Pride And Prejudice gave her a good idea of the kind of men she’s after.

Keira, who plays Elizabeth Bennet, believes Matthew’s appeal is that he looks like a real man rather than the pretty boys women are meant to fancy.

She says: “One of the most romantic things in the world is a proper man and Matthew plays Darcy with huge vulnerability which makes him really interesting. He did a spectacular job and I’m an even bigger fan of his now.” Keira reveals she was initially turned down for the role because the director thought she was “too pretty”. “Then he met me and realised I was a complete scruff and said I’d be perfect,” she laughs.

Curiouser and curiouser.

Alert Janeite Robyn sent us a P&P3 preview from Entertainment Weekly.

The Oregon Daily Emerald brings the snark in a review of autumn films, though they are about a year behind the times. However, it made us giggle.

And if that weren’t enough for you, there is also a new adaptation of Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice,” the fifth in the last decade (if you count “Bridget Jones’s Diary”). Apparently director Joe Wright seems to think that he has something new to add to the story, such as sewer mutants or Donald Sutherland.

Ha!

And it does look like a thunderstorm is brewing at AustenBlog World Headquarters…

Alert Janeites Cindy and Jennite as well as Paul from KeiraWeb.com sent us a link to an article in the Sydney Morning Herald that discusses the continuing popularity of Jane Austen, with mentions of P&P3 and books about her and her work.

This is the nub of the matter, she says. Many people think Austen’s books are about young women deciding who to marry, but that is only half the story. “What she is fascinated by is that moment around about late teens, just before you turn 20 or 21, when a young woman faces a moment of choice.” To borrow Dr Johnson’s phrase, this is a “a choice of life”, a choice of how to live, and it is essentially moral. “You’re making a choice about how you as an individual, who’s on the verge of growing up, can best use your energy and contribute to the welfare of the community.”

This is also an astonishingly modern concern. When Austen was writing in the late-18th and early-19th centuries - she lived only 41 years, from 1775 to 1817 - women had no vote, no political influence, and were usually dependent on men for financial security. “Yet she has the largeness of soul to see that we are all responsible for our moral behaviour,” Gay says. This is why Austen still seems so relevant today, as we are confronted with the same choices about how to behave - and fewer rules to guide us. Yet for some, at least, there is more to it than that. Austen is not just admired, she is loved, and she is loved with rare intensity. People do not call Shakespeare “William”, no matter how much they admire his work. The author of Great Expectations is always Dickens, never Charles. But many Austen fans habitually call their favourite author Jane - and refer to themselves as “Janeites”. It is indicative of the special regard in which she is held. They see her books as a source of wisdom, strength and - this word comes up again and again - comfort.

The Asti Spumanti Code, a parody of The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown, features a mysterious group of historical authors, including our Jane.

The mysterious and much-sought-after Asti Spumante Code apparently stemmed from a secret society of classical authors (among them Charles Dickens and Jane Austen) named The Order of Psion. The members apparently followed a tradition of continuity and solidarity by passing down their knowledge from one generation to the next, refining the art of story-telling as time goes on. Eventually, they aim to produce a book so good that everyone will not read anything else, ever.

This, unfortunately, will put publishers out of business forever. In retaliation, the publishers set up the English Book Guild on Uxbridge Road (URG), a shadowy medieval organisation, to prevent the synthesis of this feared “greatest book in the world”.

You mean Pride and Prejudice isn’t it? Emma, perhaps? Surely not Mansfield Park, but…

In an article in The Australian about The Jane Austen Book Club author Karen Joy Fowler, Ms. Fowler mentions that the works of Jane Austen had different meanings for her at different times in her life.

Fowler has read Austen repeatedly since her teens and finds her “endlessly renewable”. What she has been “for me in a kind of embarrassingly self-centred way - well, no kind of about it - in a completely embarrassingly self-centred way, is whatever has been my issue at that time: I read her as a young mother, it was all about families; I read her as a teenager, it was all about the romance; I read her as a feminist, it was all about the economic impact on women. Whatever I wanted her to be about, there it is.”

Some reviewers have labelled The Jane Austen Book Club chick-lit, focusing on its preoccupation with relationships and its attention to fashions, furnishings and finger foods. That is to underestimate its complexity. Philosopher A.C. Grayling has similarly pointed out that in terms of plot, Jane Austen resembles Mills&Boon romances, yet in terms of execution they are worlds apart.

Very true; and further examples of how Jane Austen should not be limited by any extreme viewpoints.

Jeanne Cooper, writing for the San Francisco Chronicle, compares the social interworkings among guests on a month-long cruise of the South Pacific to a Jane Austen novel.

In a form of social matchmaking Austen would have understood (but perhaps my husband would not), I was instantly steered to the handful of other adult children and older gentlemen in want of traveling companions. The pressure was taken off, however, by the revelation that an even more romantic figure had boarded in Auckland: a newly minted multimillionaire who’d just sold the New Zealand island where he’d lived alone for several decades — and whose wardrobe looked like it.

The stories going around about him were so intense that eventually the ship screened a New Zealand TV documentary about him, where we all learned that he didn’t like to be called a hermit (other people could always visit his island) and that he wouldn’t say exactly how much his island had sold for (rather a lot, we gathered). I tried to restrain my own curiosity when he joined our lunch table the next day, but I like to think Austen would have approved of my polite small talk, even if it did not lead to a marriage of minds and fortunes.

There’s more about the actual cruise here. A point of interest is that the ship Discovery was formerly the Island Princess, one of those seen on THE LOVE BOAT. No wonder the authoress’ mind was turned to Austen!

An article at Scotsman.com about first editions tells a little about why Jane Austen’s first editions cost more than, say, Charles Dickens’:

A full, original edition of the 20 episodes of Dickens’ Nicholas Nickleby reached only £4,800 at a recent auction, while an initial printing of the serialised parts of Our Mutual Friend would currently be worth only £500. That said, a couple of years ago a first edition of Pride and Prejudice sold for £22,000 in Edinburgh.

Alex Dove, a book specialist at Bonhams, said a good-condition full set of Jane Austen’s classic should fetch between £20,000 and £30,000. Dove explained: “Her novels, like Pride and Prejudice, were published in three volumes, and you would need all three to command a top price. Early Dickens are even more rare, as they were printed as serials in pamphlets. It is very unusual to have a full set of each edition - so these can command high prices.”

And weren’t there a lot more copies of the Dickens serials produced than of Jane Austen’s novels? Just saying.