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.

Alert Janeite Kira wrote to tell us that the December issue of Vogue has a little bit about dressing like a Jane Austen heroine–or at least Vogue’s notion of doing so.

“The invitations say simply ‘festive’ or ‘cocktail’—but with social codes becoming more formal this winter, why not play the Regency heroine in a romantic Jane Austen dress? Dreamy Elizabeth Bennets and Emma Woodhouses let their party shoes peek out flirtatiously from floor-length frocks. And the Empire waist that looks so much in fashion right now would be perfectly Pride & Prejudice with a pair of these rhinestone lady slippers.”

But but but…we thought Empire waists made women look BAD!

And we cannot imagine any Austen heroine being caught dead in rhinestone slippers, except perhaps in the imagination of the Longbourn neighbourhood when they thought Lydia Bennet would “come upon the town.” Still, it’s rather hilarious that their minds went that way…when you have Jane on the mind, everything follows!