Alert Janeite Nan sent a press release with the comment, “How cool is this?” We say, pretty darn cool!

Miami Heat guard Dwyane Wade will make an appearance at Miami Dade College’s Wolfson Campus on Thursday, April 13, 2006, at 6:30 p.m. to discuss Pride and Prejudice with the Heat’s announcer; the event is a celebration of Penguin’s newly-packaged classics and a promotion of reading and literacy. If you buy a copy of one of the Penguin books available, you’ll get a copy of the poster pictured here, featuring Mr. Wade reading from P&P. (If anyone from Penguin is reading this–the Editrix would LOVE one! *cough cough*)

From the press release:

The project began when Penguin Classics and the NBA asked Wade to help celebrate the 60th Anniversary of Penguin Classics and NBA Cares “Read to Achieve” Literacy Initiative by choosing a classic title. Wade selected Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice as his favorite Penguin Classic.

“I’ve read Pride and Prejudice a couple of times,” Wade explained. “It’s one of my favorite books, which usually surprises people. I guess they wonder how a love story from Regency England could be relevant to a 21st century basketball player from the Southside of Chicago. Class struggle, overcoming stereotypes and humble beginnings, getting out of your own way and letting love take over: these are things I can relate to, definitely.”

We LOVE this guy!!!

Other NBA stars chose some great books as well: Siddhartha by Herman Hesse, The Crucible by Arthur Miller, and Narrative of My Life as a Slave by Frederick Douglass.

The event is free and open to the public; seating is first come, first served. Check out the press release for details.

ETA: Alert Janeite Robyn wrote to tell us that the Penguin Classics US Web site has an expanded quote from Dwyane and a PDF of the poster so you can print it yourself.

The Times has a great article on a tidbit in the auction catalog of the books of Queen Charlotte, the wife of George III, which included books by Jane Austen–apparently her son, the Prince Regent, was not the only Janeite in the family–and listed two of Mary Brunton’s books as written by Jane Austen. The books, like Jane Austen’s, had been published anonymously, though the posthumous editions of Persuasion and NA included the biographical notice that identified Jane Austen. The Queen’s librarian assumed that Mary Brunton’s anonymously-published works were the work of the same author. This is particularly ironic, since Jane Austen wrote some snarky commentary about Brunton’s novel Self-Control in one of her letters.

The Queen had died in November 1818. Her collection included Austen’s posthumous publications, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, published in December 1817 with the “biographical notice” that named Austen publicly as an author for the first time and correctly identified all her novels. Between them, then, the Queen’s librarian and Christie’s cataloguer should have known better than to add to the list the forbiddingly titled Self-Control and Discipline. But they did not. It is an intriguing error. It must signal the presence of qualities that contemporaries associated with Austen; mere carelessness would not account for the addition of these anonymously published titles to the set of her works rather than to somebody else’s. Their author was not formally identified until 1819 – too late for the sale catalogue – when her widower published Emmeline. With Some Other Pieces. By Mary Brunton, Author of Self-Control, and Discipline.

[. . .]

Jane Austen, who was just at that time seeing her own first novel through the press, complained that she had been unable to lay hands on a copy. She seems to have feared being scooped by the unknown author, for Sense and Sensibility is also about self-control. When she did finally read Brunton’s book, however, she found that the work was in a different mode from her own, full of suspenseful adventures and hair’s-breadth escapes. (Even the most favourable reviews deplored the melodramatic ending, in which the heroine escapes over a waterfall somewhere near Quebec City, lashed to a birchbark canoe.) Two years later, Austen’s considered assessment, given with what sounds like a sigh of relief, was that Self-Control was “an excellently-meant, elegantly-written work, without anything of Nature or Probability in it”. Yet Austen did reread and learn from it.

[. . .]

Brunton and Austen were almost exact contemporaries and their novels, produced for the same readership, have more in common both superficially and at deeper levels than Austen’s brief remark about Nature and Probability might suggest. It is quite conceivable that Christie’s cataloguers could not tell them apart. Though Brunton’s stories may to a modern eye look like Austen’s with added sex and violence, a contemporary might have thought of the comparison as working the other way round: Austen’s were like Brunton’s but with less of that. Brunton was the more popular. Her books were more frequently reprinted than Austen’s, more widely reviewed, and quicker to win the tribute of American editions. For fifty years after the authors’ deaths (Austen’s in in 1817, Brunton’s in 1818), Brunton’s maintained a slight advantage in the market. But as her work faded from view, Austen’s began to be taken up first by cognoscenti and then by the school system, aided by a myth-making biography of 1870 and by a decorousness – at least on the surface – that made her fiction acceptable for all ages. Brunton appears to have lost ground less because of her didacticism than because of the adult content of her novels.

For those Janeites who always are wondering what to read after reading Jane Austen, here’s a suggestion.

I am not proposing to replace Austen with Brunton, only to spread the word about one worthwhile neglected writer…For those “general” or “serious” readers who like the psychic space of Regency Britain first encountered in Austen, it might be a pleasure to explore lesser edifices and so bit by bit to discover the great city that surrounds the monument.

EDITED because it would probably help if we actually put in the link to the article. (D’oh!)

For the Cult of Lizzie G (and you know who you are, gentlemen), we have received some upcoming dates for the program “A Celebration of Jane Austen,” starring Elizabeth Garvie and her husband (sorry, guys), Anton Rodgers. The shows will be held on 14 May 2006 at the Daphne Du Maurier Festival (!); 21 May at Oakengates Theatre in Telford; and 16 July at Chewton Glen Hotel, New Milton, Hampshire. (more…)

JASNA Greater Chicago Region will have its Spring Gala on May 13, 2006, at the Crowne Plaza, formerly the Allerton Hotel, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

The theme for the event is “Jane Austen’s Literary Legacy” and the speakers will be Marcia McClintock Folsom, Professor of Literature at Wheelock College in Boston, and JASNA president Joan Ray. There also will be a presentation by the Greater Chicago Region Readers’ Theater called “Nothing So Useful as a Reference to Austen.”

Visit the region’s Web site for details.

Alert Janeite Franka wrote to tell us that the BBC has updated its page for the 1995 PRIDE AND PREJUDICE adaptation, with photos, downloads, behind the scenes interviews and clips, and a contest to win a free DVD. (Keep in mind that it is most likely a Region 2 DVD and though it is a “10th Anniversary Edition” it doesn’t seem to have the goodies that the upcoming limited edition that will be released in North America.)

(Hey, there’s an idea for some enterprising sequel writer! Just remember us in your acknowledgements.)

Alert Janeite Kimberly wrote to tell us about an article in the Guardian that talks about the novels that men say changed their life.

The project, called Men’s Milestone Fiction, commissioned by the Orange prize for fiction and the Guardian, followed on from similar research into women’s favourite novels undertaken by the same team last year.

The results are strikingly different, with almost no overlap between men’s and women’s taste. On the whole, men preferred books by dead white men: only one book by a woman, Harper Lee, appears in the list of the top 20 novels with which men most identify.

Women, by contrast, most frequently cited works by Charlotte and Emily Brontë, Margaret Atwood, George Eliot and Jane Austen. They also named a “much richer and more diverse” set of novels than men, according to Prof Jardine. There was a much broader mix between contemporary and classic works and between male and female authors.

Well, we know there are SOME men who read Jane Austen…some of them even read this blog!

A review in the Los Angeles Times compares the new film FRIENDS WITH MONEY to Jane Austen’s work.

In fact, the writer-director holds such a keen mirror to modern times, has such a perfect ear for who we are and how we live in this particular corner of the world — brie on wheat bread, anyone? — that she brings another writer to mind. A woman who advised a young writer that “three or four families in a country village is the very thing to work on” and who famously never expanded her horizons beyond “the little bit (two inches wide) of ivory on which I work with so fine a brush.” A woman named Jane Austen.

There now, something to watch until BECOMING JANE comes out.

ETA: Alert Janeite Laurie wrote to tell us that the reviewer, Kenneth Turan, is a JASNA member, so the comparison is not surprising.

Brontëana wrote to tell us that Paul Gordon has uploaded two songs from his musical version of EMMA to his Web site. The songs are called “This Is How Love Feels” and “The Waltz.” We have not listened to them due to some computer problems we have been experiencing lately.

We wondered about a waltz in Emma–waltzing was not really considered proper in England in 1815, when Emma was published–but Brontëana assured us that some of the songs from the JANE EYRE musical that were not quite right did not make it into the final musical, so there is hope!

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS INFORMATION IS NOT CONFIRMED.

An article in the Daily Telegraph states that Julie Walters is playing Jane Austen’s mother in BECOMING JANE.

Becoming Jane stars Anne Hathaway, seen recently in Brokeback Mountain, as the author, James McAvoy, star of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, as her young Irish beau, and Julie Walters as Jane’s mother.

So who is Dame Maggie playing then? Hmm, was Eliza’s mother still alive then?

The rest of the article repeats the usual half-truths and Made Up Story that we’ve seen so far. However, we must have our share of the conversation snark!

An £8 million movie detailing the thwarted summer love of Austen at 19 for a young and roguish Irishman, Tom Lefroy, a real life suitor, has begun shooting in Dublin.

*clutches head in hands*

But actually, if you parse that sentence a certain way, it’s almost as if they’re ADMITTING that it’s a Made Up Story. Otherwise, why take pains to point out that Tom Lefroy was a “real life suitor?”

Julian Jarrold, the director, who made Kinky Boots, said: “Anne has the perfect combination of intelligence, emotional vulnerablity and steely determination for our Jane.”

Gentle Readers, we have our meme: Steely Determination™! Like Gritty Realism™, but different.

Mr Bernstein said that his tale was far from fanciful. “It is pretty well established that she had this whirlwind romance that started her writing First Impressions, which was the embryo for Pride and Prejudice.

Yeah, she started writing it ALMOST A YEAR LATER. Clearly a compelling incident.

“We developed the script three years ago. It is taken from research, culled from a lot of biographies.

Well, there are biographies, and then there are biographies.

Jon Spence, who wrote the book Becoming Jane, is our historical consultant. We portray a deep and emotional relationship that was not to be.

Paging Ann Radcliffe…Mrs. Radcliffe, please pick up the white courtesy phone…

“It’s the true story of how she fell in love at 19, had a relationship that was a key to her understanding of how love works, and how she became the writer we know and love today.”

Emphasis ours–because that part is actually not bad.

But don’t forget–MADE UP STORY!

P.S. to anyone from Ecosse Films who might be reading this and cares: you can write to us anytime with a cast list, you know.