Alert Janeite Cheryl K. wrote to tell us about a neat event coming up in New York City in April. “A Celebration of Jane Austen” is a discussion of Jane Austen’s novels with Karen Joy Fowler, the author of The Jane Austen Book Club, and Sigourney Weaver reading selections from the novels. The event will take place on April 12, 2006, at Symphony Space at 95th Street and Broadway, and tickets are $18.
More lovely snark on the new populist editions of Jane Austen’s novels.
It is true that there is nothing more forlorn than a forgotten author, a neglected genius whom fashion and whimsy have dictated must languish in the dusty corners of ill-attended libraries and the unread footnotes of dull reference books. Poor Jane Austen! How long must her devotees petition for her return to favour?
When all Christmas has brought you is a 10th anniversary Pride and Prejudice box set complete with anamorphic widescreen and Dolby digital, you’re bound to feel a bit of nose-out-of-jointedness. And when your most famous character, Elizabeth Bennet, has only been played by Greer Garson, Madge Evans, Daphne Slater, Jane Downs, Celia Bannerman, Elizabeth Garvie, Jennifer Ehle and Keira Knightley, what you really need is a lucky break, the helping hand of fate, a push in the right direction. But why must it always fall to publishers to mop up the wider culture’s oversights?
Apparently there’s some sort of sex scandal involving politicians in Winchester, and the Telegraph has decided to drag poor Jane into it.
Above the usual prattle of tourists, they might be able to make out a strange rhythmic scraping from beneath the stone slabs - the peculiar, but unmistakable sound of Jane Austen gently spinning in her grave.
For while no one can be sure what Winchester’s most famous resident and England’s best loved novelist would have made of the weekend’s sex scandal, it is unlikely that she would have entirely approved.
” Jane Austen may have been protected from the truth but precious little of the truth was protected from her.” - G.K. Chesterton
Just saying. 
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