Bumping this up to add new information. –Ed.

A commenter claiming to be an extra in BECOMING JANE posted in comments that James Cromwell is playing Mr. Austen and that Maggie Smith is playing Lady Gresham. We don’t know who Lady Gresham is, either; books are being feverishly studied as we type. Relative of Tom Lefroy? Irish nobility? Friend of Eliza Austen? Eccentric neighbor? Who knows? Does it matter? It’s a Made Up Story, remember? ETA: A commenter posted that Lady Gresham gives the ball at which Jane and Tom meet. No idea if she is real. We’re not even sure that the information of who gave that ball is available.

ETA: Our new friend “Wilder” also posted that Julie Walters is indeed playing Mrs. Austen. We have no reason to disbelieve Wilder, but please note that it is unconfirmed information.

The press is still intent on stirring up a kerfluffle, and it’s just comedy gold watching them all fall over themselves. Starpulse.com has an article which includes the rather hilarious claim that Jane Austen, who died, as they say, without issue (and glad of it from all reports), has “direct descendants.” Anna Chancellor, whom we all know as Miss Bingley in P&P2, is not a descendant of Jane but of her elder brother Edward. To the subject therein: Miss Chancellor thinks Anne Hathaway “too pretty” to play Jane Austen.

And now Anna Chancellor, who is a direct descendant of Austen, has slammed the decision to transform her esteemed relative into a ravishing beauty. She says, “In my mind Anne Hathaway is just too pretty to play her. Jane was a very plain woman. Her beauty was in her brain. But that’s what Hollywood does.”

We respectfully disagree. Jane was described as pretty by several relatives. Not beautiful, perhaps, but not plain. (Put down the extremes and back away slowly!) Actually, we’ve always fancied that Jane looked rather like…Anna Chancellor. (Really. Not being snarky.)

The British-made film will tell the story of Austen’s doomed love for Irish lawyer Tom LeFroy, played by James McAvoy, which floundered because LeFroy’s financial prospects failed to impress Austen’s family.

MADE UP STORY! MADE UP STORY!

Doomed love, indeed.

Alert Janeite Lorraine wrote to tell us that JASNA has made No. 15 of its yearly journal, Persuasions, available online. The conference papers are related to the 1993 AGM at Lake Louise on Persuasion. Another piece of interest is about the founding of JASNA, written by Joan Austen-Leigh.

Review by Allison T.

Dear Jane,

R U THERE? R U LISTENING? GR8! Now, will you just toddle on over to Mount Olympus and borrow a few teeny-tiny thunderbolts from Jove and zip them off post-haste in the direction of The Dashwood Sisters’ Secrets of Love, by Rosie Rushton?

O migod, life is so harsh for the Dashwood girls! I mean, their dad left their mum to marry this bimbo, Pandora, with silicone boobs and a very demanding aura. Ellie, the eldest sister, still hasn’t had a real romance at the incredibly advanced age of seventeen and a few months, while Abby, blessed with bigger boobs than her elder sister, goes through boyfriends at the rate of one every few weeks, and Georgie seems to be a hopeless tomboy at thirteen. Then Dad dies & the mazzuma is all gone and the girls and their mother are forced to go live in a little cottage in Norfolk–no all-night raves, no clubs, no department stores!–and attend a state school (public school for Americans). Way harsh! Then Abby meets this cute drummer, Nick, but although she likes him at first, she doesn’t like like him, if U know what I mean, and then she meets this XSively cool guy, Hunter, who seems to have a lot of money although his dad is being investigated for fraud but she doesn’t care about that because she really like likes him, and then he wants her to, you know, prove it and then, well… (more…)

Apparently we’re not the only ones surprised (and delighted) by Dwyane Wade’s classic novel of choice.

I was leafing through The New York Times Book Review the other day, in my weekly stab at keeping current on books I know I’ll never have time to read, when I was startled to see the face of Dwyane Wade, the superstar guard of the Miami Heat, staring back at me.

He was posed in a double-page advertisement alongside three other big names in basketball.

He wasn’t endorsing a product you’d expect, like Nikes or Powerade or “Got Milk?”

Nope, a smiling Wade was holding a copy of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.

A 6′4″, 212-pound all-star who averages 27.5 points per game.

Plugging the ultimate in chick lit.

Penguin Classics, paperback publisher of distinguished titles, has enlisted NBA and WNBA players to help rouse young people’s interest in literature.

They’re pairing great writers of yesterday with sports heroes of today.

It’s a novel approach to image-building for the NBA, so concerned with toning up its act that players must now hide the hip-hop wear and put on business casual attire when off the court.

I did a real double-take. I didn’t think Pride and Prejudice was anything a pro basketball player would be caught dead caring about — unless maybe Carmen Electra starred in the remake.

Oh gawd. Don’t give them any ideas.

Once you get past the stereotype of Austen being a women’s writer, you see that her subject is universal, said Susan Jones, an associate professor of English at Palm Beach Atlantic University.

“Pride and Prejudice is a book that is really about people being true to themselves,” said Jones, who’s also co-coordinator of the South Florida branch of the Jane Austen Society of North America, “even when people around them are pushing them in one direction or another.”

You’ve got to hand it to Wade, to try to show other young people there’s more to “classic” than a type of Coke or an ESPN channel that re-runs old games.

We couldn’t agree more!

And, for those who missed it, JASNA President Joan Ray posted in the comments of the first post about Mr. Wade that JASNA is giving him an honorary membership.

(That might be kind of cool, in a train-wrecky sort of way.)

The Telegraph has an article about a survey of female readers, who say they prefer thrillers to romance novels.

However, today’s survey by Woman & Home magazine found that if women could pick one “desert island” book it would be the romantic classic Pride and Prejudice.

Mr Darcy was also regarded as the sexiest fictional man, beating Heathcliffe (Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights), Rhett Butler (Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell) and Mr Rochester (Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte).

Hmm. We would not call Heathcliff sexy, exactly. Mr. Rochester has the broody thing going, but Heathcliff is rather…single-minded, shall we say?

But, some things never change.

If they were to be a character in a book, most women would be Elizabeth Bennett. (sic)

Well, of course.