Portland Center Stage Theater is presenting a stage version of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE through November 20. Tickets are available online.

If you’ve seen this production, send in your review!

ETA 10/31: A review from the Oregonian.

Times Newspapers of Auckland is offering free passes to P&P3–it requires e-mailing to answer to a very easy question by 5 p.m. on Monday. That’s soon for you guys, we think, so make haste!!!

…sort of! Raphael Kadushin writes about traveling through the beautiful Hampshire countryside, including Chawton, in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune:

“And this is where she wrote,” the docent said.

“She” was Jane Austen, and what I was staring at was a tiny wooden table, its round top about the size of a Frisbee, tucked discreetly beside a window, looking like something praying not to be noticed.

The table was the kind you would serve cashews and olives on, though there might not be room for the cashews, and it was hard to picture Austen composing “Pride and Prejudice” on this undersized insult of a writing desk. Seeing it was like learning that Julia Child produced all those airy French soufflés in an Easy Bake oven, though Child didn’t have to worry about hiding her work every time someone entered the kitchen.

It is a rather tiny table, and pretty beat up, but we agree with all of the author’s comments about Hampshire–it is really beautiful country. It is easy to understand why Jane Austen so loved it.

Big bad hockey dude Brendan Shanahan of the Detroit Red Wings told the Detroit Free Press that he likes Jane Austen–at least, better than he likes Ernest Hemingway, which is something, one supposes.

“Jane Austen or Ernest Hemingway? Ah, will people think less of me if I say Jane Austen? I like “Sense and Sensibility.” . . . I guess I should say Hemingway. You know, I really kind of, I know it’s embarrassing, but I like her stuff better than his.”

Don’t be embarrassed, Brendan darling, we assure you that women are swooning everywhere. The boys will only tease you because they’re jealous.

The Editrix and Dorothy, incidentally, are very fond of watching a hockey game of an evening, so the enjoyment of hockey and Jane Austen are not necessarily mutually exclusive. (But we must add, Mr. Shanahan notwithstanding: Go Flyers!)

…and already plotting the How and When of our return to the scene of our public triumph, lovely Bath. We know Jane wasn’t fond of that city, but we liked it, especially out towards the first place that the Austens lived there, 4 Sydney Place.

A complete travelogue is forthcoming sometime this week–have some catching up to do first.

We really need to lead a round of applause for the other AustenBloggers (particularly Cub Reporter Tasha, who has done yeo(wo)man work and is being revived with a bracing pot of Dorothy’s Orange Pekoe) for handling things whilst we swanned round Old Blighty having fun. Or, in that Nelsonian spirit, perhaps three cheers:

Hip, hip, HUZZAH!

Hip, hip, HUZZAH!

Hip, hip, HUZZAH!

Incidentally, when we win the lottery, we plan to purchase 4 Sydney Place, kick out the current squatters who live there (hope they didn’t mind us taking photos of their house…but they really should close their curtains. Just saying) and turn it into the new and improved AustenBlog World Headquarters, with the comfortable chintz-upholstered chairs of the Jane Austen Memorial Library and Reading Room open to all Janeites! You just have to know the Password of the First Degree…Tilneys and trap-doors, of course.