The latest issue of Persuasions Online is available on the JASNA Web site. Several of the articles are related to last autumn’s AGM theme, Jane Austen’s Letters, and other subjects are covered as well.

Janeite librarians, bibliophiles and general obsessives eagerly await Barry Roth’s JA Bibliography every year. We love reading the list, because it is always so eclectic.

The Summer 2005 issue of JASNA News also is available as a PDF. Alert readers might notice a familiar byline contained therein. *cough*

After our post from the other day, more new Austen-related paraliterature has come to our attention.

Amanda Elyot wrote to tell us that her novel By a Lady : Being the Adventures of an Enlightened American in Jane Austen’s England will be out on March 28.

Our Janeite Spy also has informed us of two other books that she ferreted out, no doubt through some nefarious means involving no search warrants. Jane Austen in Scarsdale; or Love, Death, and the SATs by Paula Marantz Cohen, author of the delightful Jane Austen in Boca, will be released on April 4. From Amazon:

What would a latter-day Jane Austen say about love, death, and the SATs? Anne Ehrlich is a dedicated guidance counselor steering her high school charges through the perils of college admission. Years ago, when she was graduating from Columbia, her wealthy family persuaded her to give up the love of her life, Ben Cutler, a poor boy from Brooklyn College. Anne has never married and hasn’t seen Ben for 13 years-until his nephew turns up in her high school and starts applying to college. Can old love be rekindled, or are past mistakes too painful to forget?

Boy, that plot sounds AWFULLY familiar…

The Man Who Loved Jane Austen by Sally Smith O’Rourke will be released on April 6. We believe this is a re-release of a self-published title.

We also found a listing for I Can’t Get Enough of Jane Austen. It’s unclear what the book is about but it doesn’t seem to be fiction.

A project to produce open source audiobooks recently came to our attention, and since a few Jane Austen projects are in process, we thought our readers would be interested.

From the LibriVox Web site:

LibriVox wants all books in the public domain to be available, for free, in audio format, on the internet. We ask volunteers to record chapters of books in the public domain in digital format; all you need is a computer, some free recording software, and your own voice! We are a totally volunteer, open source, free content, public domain project.

Currently there are no completed Jane Austen books available, but Pride and Prejudice and Northanger Abbey are in process as collaborative projects. They need volunteer readers, so if you have the technology and are interested in volunteering, check it out!

Pride and Prejudice, Lady Susan, Sense and Sensibility and Emma are all in process as solo projects, read by a single reader.

Projects such as this, in our opinion, are what make the Internet great. For everything bad and annoying about the information superhighway, one can find gems that make it worthwhile.

Cristina from BrontëBlog wrote to tell us that Kate Atkinson, the author of the novels Behind the Scenes at the Museum, Human Croquet, Emotionally Weird and Case Histories, lists Pride and Prejudice as No. 3 on her Top Ten Novels list.

The Mozart opera of novels and again a transcendent union of structure and content in which unhappy marriage is the reward for those who show a weakness of character and lifelong happiness is a province reserved only for those “who truly know themselves.”

Alert Janeite Jamie wrote to tell us that an audio clip of actor Michael Sheen reading Captain Wentworth’s letter to Anne Elliot is available for download on iTunes for 99 cents. It is part of a collection called “A Lover’s Gift - From Him to Her” that includes famous love letters, monologues, and poems.

(no, not an iMac, despite all the Editrix’s greedy covetous gazing upon it.)

The Arizona Daily Star’s theatre critic has given out awards for local theatre this year in Tucson, and the touring production of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE won two: Anthony Marble for lead actor and Jon Jory for director.

Brontëana sent us a link to a course that will be part of the 2006-2007 academic year at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Filming Jane Austen. They concentrate on only three of Jane Austen’s novels, Emma, Mansfield Park and Persuasion; interestingly, no Pride and Prejudice. (Wonder what the professor will have to say about the Green!Plaid!Dress?)

(However, there will be a small gathering in the Richard Musgrove Memorial Media Room and Auditorium when the Fighting Snarks play East Podunk State Teacher’s College in the Punch Bowl on New Year’s Day. Cucumber sandwiches and gallons of Dorothy’s famous piping hot Orange Pekoe will be served.)

Class will come to order!

For today’s lesson, we shall study and parse the following offering presented at thestranger.com.

In her early novel Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen makes it clear that Elizabeth Bennet has little respect for her friend Charlotte’s pragmatic view of marriage.

Okay, we’ll buy that.

And though Elizabeth loves her older sister, Jane, she can’t exactly endorse her lovesick moping either.

From Pride and Prejudice, Vol. II, Ch. I:

Elizabeth, to whom Jane very soon communicated the chief of all this, heard it in silent indignation. Her heart was divided between concern for her sister, and resentment against all the others. To Caroline’s assertion of her brother’s being partial to Miss Darcy she paid no credit. That he was really fond of Jane, she doubted no more than she had ever done; and much as she had always been disposed to like him, she could not think without anger, hardly without contempt, on that easiness of temper, that want of proper resolution which now made him the slave of his designing friends, and led him to sacrifice his own happiness to the caprice of their inclinations. Had his own happiness, however, been the only sacrifice, he might have been allowed to sport with it in what ever manner he thought best; but her sister’s was involved in it, as, she thought, he must be sensible himself. It was a subject, in short, on which reflection would be long indulged, and must be unavailing. She could think of nothing else, and yet whether Bingley’s regard had really died away, or were suppressed by his friends’ interference; whether he had been aware of Jane’s attachment, or whether it had escaped his observation; whichever were the case, though her opinion of him must be materially affected by the difference, her sister’s situation remained the same, her peace equally wounded.

With practicality and sentiment out of the picture, what can possibly make Elizabeth fall for the proud Mr. Darcy? Austen is decorously evasive on this question

From Pride and Prejudice, Vol. III, Ch. II:

But above all, above respect and esteem, there was a motive within her of good will which could not be overlooked. It was gratitude. — Gratitude, not merely for having once loved her, but for loving her still well enough to forgive all the petulance and acrimony of her manner in rejecting him, and all the unjust accusations accompanying her rejection. He who, she had been persuaded, would avoid her as his greatest enemy, seemed, on this accidental meeting, most eager to preserve the acquaintance, and without any indelicate display of regard, or any peculiarity of manner, where their two selves only were concerned, was soliciting the good opinion of her friends, and bent on making her known to his sister. Such a change in a man of so much pride excited not only astonishment but gratitude — for to love, ardent love, it must be attributed; and as such, its impression on her was of a sort to be encouraged, as by no means unpleasing, though it could not be exactly defined. She respected, she esteemed, she was grateful to him; she felt a real interest in his welfare; and she only wanted to know how far she wished that welfare to depend upon herself, and how far it would be for the happiness of both that she should employ the power, which her fancy told her she still possessed, of bringing on the renewal of his addresses.

According to director Joe Wright and screenwriter Deborah Moggach, Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy aren’t so much in love as they are erotically enthralled.

From Vol. III, Ch. XVI (you might want to light a candle or two and play some Barry White or something to get you in the mood for this passage):

Elizabeth was too much embarrassed to say a word. After a short pause, her companion added, “You are too generous to trifle with me. If your feelings are still what they were last April, tell me so at once. My affections and wishes are unchanged, but one word from you will silence me on this subject for ever.”

They walked on, without knowing in what direction. There was too much to be thought, and felt, and said, for attention to any other objects.

Cue the saxophone solo.

We do hope you all took good notes. Do not forget to bring a blue book for the exam.

Persuasion is the Movie of the Day at IMDB — catch it while you can, because as Miz Scarlett said, tomorrow is another day. From the writeup:

Romantic comedies, British style, enjoyed a renaissance in the ’90s thanks primarily to a newfound ardor for one of Britain’s most famous novelists, Jane Austen. A master (or is that mistress?) of British social mores, Our Miss Austen could navigate through society and matters of the heart like a minesweeper on a particularly bad battlefield. Mixing sharp comedy with social satire and a big dollop of romance, Austen’s comedies took a bit of a torturous path getting to their happy endings, but her protagonists never lost their moxie or their strength; they’re truly modern heroines. While Gwyneth Paltrow made an appropriately nosy Emma and the dynamic duo of Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet provided the charm and charisma for Sense and Sensibility, the best of the recent Austen adaptations was 1995’s bittersweet Persuasion, a little-seen but much-loved BBC production that made a splash in American theaters. Amanda Root is the suitably shy and oppressed heroine who comes to realize that the man she loved and gave up–after being told she could find a more suitable match–might in fact be the one she was meant for all the time. This charming comedy put director Roger Michell on the map, the man who later guided Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts over Notting Hill.

…because the Journal Gazette has two articles about Jane Austen today.

The first is an interview with a professor of English from Manchester College, Katherine Ings.

This native of Prince Edward Island doesn’t consider herself as expert as some “Jane-ites” on Austen. Still, during a trip to England, she searched out Austen artifacts in the British Museum in London and visited Austen’s haunts in Bath — seeing the carry-about desk on which she secretly wrote and tasting the waters at Bath’s famous Pump Room. “They smell of sulfur,” Ings says. “They’re really foul.”

Why do people insist upon putting a dash in the word “Janeites,” anyway?

Also, Jane Austen’s writing desk is in the British Library, not the British Museum. We observed it there (in the Treasures Room! With the Lindisfarne Gospels and the Magna Freaking Carta! The very best company indeed!). And we found that the water served in the Pump Room really is not that bad…it has a metallic tang and of course is warm, which is a little strange.

“The British audience is getting a different ending from the North American audience. The Jane Austen International Society is not at all pleased about this. The North American version ends with a kiss, and the British version does not, and there is considerable debate about why the North American audience needs an explicit display of affection.”

What, pray, is the “Jane Austen International Society?” And for the record, it’s not so much the display of affection that is the objection, it’s the bad romance-novel dialogue that accompanies it.

There also is an editorial by Catherine Lee, executive director of the Fort Wayne Cinema Center, objecting to much of P&P3. We agree with much of what she says but know from experience that she is whistling into the wind.

Alert Brontëite (and Janeite!) Brontëana, proprietor of the weblog of the same name, wrote to tell us that Paul Gordon, who was nominated for a Tony award for his Broadway adaptation of JANE EYRE, posted at a message board saying that he will be working on a musical adaptation of EMMA next. Obviously there is no date or anything definite, but it’s still very interesting news.

We have previously linked to similar stories, but we found this one from Australia especially amusing.

And so we sat and watched the new Pride and Prejudice. And we sat and sat. It was OK as far as Pride and Prejudices go, I guess. Keira Knightley did some odd things with her jaw at times, but, you know, whatever gets you through. The old man behind us, who used to make the most beautiful pies in his bakery, said she “looked like a bloody piranha, the way she goes on with her gob”. But my mum couldn’t care less about Keira, or Lizzy as she was called in the new Pride and Prejudice. She was interested in Mr Darcy.

Mr Darcy. I rubbed my head. What did I think, she asked, about Mr Darcy?

What is it about Mr Darcy and women?

I said he was all right. “Although I think he had a wig.”

“Mr Darcy wasn’t bald,” she said.

“Yes,” I said, “but I think that fella’s hair was a bit thin. But he was pretty good.”

My mother was silent for a while. “Yes,” she said, “I liked him, I liked that Mr Darcy.”

Check it out, you will not be sorry (even the non-snarkers).

Yes, it’s kind of a lame post title, but we’re attempting to get in the holiday spirit. Dorothy has hung up the mistletoe at AustenBlog World Headquarters and we’re waiting impatiently for Henry Tilney (such a good-natured, obliging young man) to show up and stand under it. Wearing a great coat. And boots. Definitely boots.

Where were we again? Oh yes…

We’ve been a bit remiss in keeping up with the latest publications. Lady Russell would be most put out; but she will no doubt be delighted to hear that just in time for her winter removal to Bath, the press will be groaning with several new Jane Austen-related books. We probably should not be surprised to note that they are all Pride and Prejudice paraliterature. Darcy™ is probably as much a brand as Jane Austen™, after all. (more…)

The CBC reports that PRIDE AND PREJUDICE has received eight nominations from the London Film Critics’ Circle Awards.

Pride and Prejudice, based on the Jane Austen novel, garnered eight nominations including best actor for Matthew MacFadyen, best director for Joe Wright and best actress for Keira Knightley. Supporting actresses Brenda Blethyn and Rosamund Pike also received nominations.

Critical reception of the film, apparently including London film critics, has been undeniably enthusiastic (the Rotten Tomatoes score is still 86 percent fresh) but in recent days it seems some writers have started to push back.

Gina Fattore, writing in Salon.com (if you are not a paying member, you will have to watch an ad to get access) weighs in from the opposite point of view.

And this is where I get into trouble. Because if I stop here to point out that in the book, Mr. Darcy tells Elizabeth that he ardently admires and loves her within the confines of a snug drawing room, we start to enter crazed, Jane-ite spinster territory. Face it. If you are a single woman of a certain age, you can either be obsessed with Jane Austen or you can have cats. You cannot do both, and a long, long time ago I chose Jane. I haven’t just read the books and reread them. I’ve been to her house at Chawton. I’ve seen her grave at Winchester Cathedral (which, for the record, is the only time Jane Austen ever made me cry). I’ve even walked around Bath with a copy of “Persuasion” trying to figure out exactly where Anne Elliot is standing when she first catches sight of Capt. Wentworth on Milsom Street.

All of which renders me uniquely unqualified to have any sort of opinion on this movie. Because really … if the whole thing functions as a satisfying piece of entertainment, why quibble about such tiny little deviations from the book? The sentiments Darcy and Elizabeth express out there in the rain — while looking just as waterlogged as Hugh Grant and Andie MacDowell at the end of “Four Weddings and a Funeral” — are essentially what Jane Austen wrote in the novel. And people like it! Which means they like Jane Austen. So what if it’s outside? Conventional Hollywood wisdom dictates that it’s usually better to open up these stilted drawing room productions for cinematic purposes. We get outside, we get a little fresh air. If we’re bored, we can look at the scenery. What’s the harm?

The harm is that trapping would-be lovers in a thunderstorm was already a horrifically trite and clichéd romantic convention circa 1796, when Jane Austen first began writing the novel that would become “Pride and Prejudice.”

We had a tough time picking out a representative quote–the whole article is very good and had us nodding vigorously in several places.

LA Brain Terrain also weighs in on reservations about the film (and kindly mentions AustenBlog as well).

I want to hear what others have to say about the new Pride & Prejudice adaptation. I wasn’t that bothered by the KISS as I was by the director’s misunderstanding of Jane Austen’s sensibilities.

Basically, this adaptation was just Wuthering Heights dressed up in Pride & Prejudice clothing ( and yes, there are Bronte blogs). While I applaud any filmmakers’ effort to bring historical veracity to a film, the decision to move the timeline to the 1790s and make the scenery much more coarse and wild, also made the story more romantic, in the Byronic use of the word.

This is fine but Austen mocked the Romantic, in all her books but most especially Sense and Sensibility and Northanger Abbey. This will not do! It’s clear the director had never read or loved the Austen books because he couldn’t love Jane for what she truly was: a clear eyed anti-sentimentalist and a Realist. She may have even been a Mannerist, who knows. The chief crime of this adaptation, directed by Joe Wright, is that he misunderstands Austen, who was telling a story about the dangers of misunderstanding people. Aargh. Perhaps P&P 3 is all just one deliberate cosmic joke on us misunderstood bluestockings.

While we didn’t like the costumes and the mud and the barnyard ambience of the film, we could dismiss them much more easily than the breathtaking misapprehension of what makes the novel great. This has been a difficult point for us to get across, as it does not boil down to details such as “the dress was wrong” or “she didn’t wear gloves at the ball” (though those circumstances also contributed to our general dissatisfaction). It also has been frustrating to have our point of view dismissed as “purist” or “prissy.” We are neither one; not by a long shot. Let’s face it, melodrama is a lot more earnest than satire. We snarkers actually are a rather relaxed lot.

Our main emotions toward the film are frustration and disappointment and the feeling of a waste of a magnificent opportunity to make a truly great film. We cannot believe that those who enjoyed the film would not have enjoyed it just as much, if not more, if the filmmakers were more respectful of the source material and less consumed with “improving” it.

Stephen Wenlock ran the titles of Jane Austen’s novels through the Lulu Book Title Analyzer.

Pride and Prejudice, Persuasion and Sense and Sensibility apparently each have a 59.3% chance of being best-sellers, with Emma only a little way behind at 45.6%. That young lady will go far.

That’s a nifty little app. We ran a couple of our proposed titles through it *cough* and came up with an abysmal 10.2 percent score. But then, so did The DaVinci Code. Oh well, obviously some things can’t be quantified.

<geek>And we were unaware that the founder of Red Hat is also the founder of Lulu!</geek>

Alert Janeite Cinthia wrote to tell us that BECOMING JANE has obtained financing (not to mention the patronage of the Irish Film Board) and will begin shooting next year in Ireland. The truly exciting news is that the cast will include Maggie Smith (one of the Editrix’s favorite actresses of all time) and Julie Walters. Who will they play? Who knows? Let the speculation begin!

Scripted by Kevin Hood and Sarah Williams, BECOMING JANE is the true story of Jane Austen’s romantic relationship with a young Irishman and the emerging motivation which inspired her to become one of the greatest female writers of the 19th century. The film will star Anne Hathaway (BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, ELLA ENCHANTED) in the lead role, with Maggie Smith and Julie Walters also starring. The film will shoot on location in the Dublin/Wicklow region with a budget of approximately €12.5 million. BECOMING JANE will be co-produced by Octagon Films with financing from the Irish Film Board, the UK Film Council, Bank of Ireland and Scion (UK).

Our opinion: Dame Maggie = Mrs. Austen; Julie Walters = Madame Lefroy (Tom Lefroy’s auntie and one of Jane Austen’s best friends).

P.S. Some info from the Kings Inns “famous grads” Web site on Tom Lefroy, with a portrait from late in his life (third one down in the funny wig)…hilarious that the poor guy was Chief Justice of Ireland and he’s best remembered as Jane Austen’s teenaged boyfriend.

icWales has an article about the success (and overseas sales) of Andrew Davies’ television adaptation of Charles Dickens’ Bleak House in which Mr. Davies discusses his next project, a BBC adaptation of Sense and Sensibility.

“I haven’t started it yet but I am very happy to be adapting the novel,” Davies said. “Jane Austen is still my favourite novelist and I am pleased to be able to work with her writing.”

The adaptation won’t be Davies’s first foray with Austen. In 1995 he enjoyed resounding acclaim for his BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, which shot Colin Firth to fame as the inimitable Mr Darcy.

With the weight of that production weighing on his shoulders, Davies admits that the pressure is on to get the adaptation right.

“I had hoped that there wouldn’t be any pressure but of course there is a little,” he said.

“But I treat each project separately and try to push things like that to the back of my mind.”

Dorothy (who admits to a weakness for Dickens) just peeked over our shoulder whilst bringing us a fresh pot of Orange Pekoe and expressed a wish that Bleak House might make it across the pond.

It’s rather refreshing to hear someone admit it out loud.

“We didn’t shy away from the mention of Jane Austen. She’s a brand,” Focus marketing prexy David Brooks says. “This book is the most popular of her work. We embraced that.”

So can we Janeites bring suit for dilution of the Jane Austen™ brand with “Jane Austenesque” products?

We thought this was hilarious.

Tom Holt has sold three new humorous fantasy novels to Orbit publishers.

“I don’t think any of them are going to be Paul Carpenter books,” said Holt about his hapless office worker from The Portable Door trilogy. “The next book may well be a standalone. It’ll be set in an office and involve at least one dog.”

Holt has a thing for offices. “They’re the places where the sort of people I write about tend to spend a large proportion of their time,” he explained. “They’re not altogether happy about this. They would far rather work for Jane Austen, so that they could swan about drinking tea out of porcelain cups and taking pleasant strolls on immaculately tended lawns. Sadly, Jane Austen is no longer in the writing biz, and they have to take whatever’s going. If they’d tried harder at school, maybe got a few more GCSEs, they could be being written by Robert Rankin or J K Rowling right now; they could have been, you know, characters, instead of being stuck in some grotty office servicing obsolescent plot mechanisms for rubbish wages. Serves them right, in my opinion. If they’re not careful, I’ll outsource the whole operation to Vanuatu, where characters are glad to do an honest day’s work for a couple of quid and a bit of development.”

This office worker has been known to swan about drinking tea in the afternoon…

Emily Auerbach’s book Searching for Jane Austen will be out in paperback in March 2006.

Auerbach’s 2004 book, “Searching for Jane Austen,” will be released in paperback for the first time March 2006 by the University of Wisconsin Press. In it, Auerbach demolishes with wit and vivacity the often-held view of “Jane,” a decorous maiden aunt writing her small drawing-room stories of tea parties and balls.

Auerbach presents a different Jane Austen - a brilliant writer who, despite the obstacles facing women of her time, worked seriously on improving her craft and became one of the world’s greatest novelists: a master of wit, irony and character development.

Amazon.com lists the release date as March 28, 2006.