(And we don’t mean the thoroughly delightful film!)

Alert Janeites Sumita and Dae each wrote to tell us that Newsweek has published the apparently earth-shattering news that hey! We Middle-Aged Austen Whores have a chance to get married, too! And they even take Jane’s name in vain.

Not everyone wants to marry, of course. And we’re long past those Jane Austen days when being “marriage-minded” was primarily a female trait; today many men openly hope for a wife just as much as women long for a husband.

As Dae said, “Of course. Because Jane Austen never ever hinted that her male characters hoped for a wife. Oh no. How silly.” Very true!

Sumita added, “Not sure whether I fully agree that men never thought of marriage in Austen’s world. In fact I think it was considered a man and woman’s duty to society to marry a suitable mate e.g. thus it seemed that Mr. Knightley’s one deficiency was erased by marriage to Emma.” Well, Mr. John Knightley had secured the succession, so the responsibility was more or less off the elder brother’s shoulders. Remember Emma’s aversion to cutting out little Harry, unless she were the one doing the cutting out!

You know what we think Jane Austen would say to that article? We think she would say, “What makes you think we middle-aged spinsters all want to get married in the first place?” If Jane Austen had married and had children (as was inevitable in those days, barring fertility problems), she most likely would not have written her books. Do not wish that upon her, or upon us for that matter!

Can one apply the Cluebat of Janeite Righteousness to a magazine?

Dorothy! Dust off the Cluebat! It’s been much too quiet around here.

Alert Janeite Mandy sent us a link to the new Bloomsbury edition of Pride and Prejudice, marketed to teenagers, as should be obvious by the cover and the introduction by Meg Cabot. The cover is fairly dreadful, though we could learn to live with it if, as Mandy pointed out, it would be attractive to teens; after all, we wore five and ten light blue eyeshadow when we were that age so we probably shouldn’t judge; but the cover blurb is just insupportable!

In a remote Hertfordshire community, the Bennet family has a sensitive enterprise - Mr Bennet must marry off his five young daughters if any of them is to inherit his estate after he has died.

We understand that they are marketing this to the younkers, but is it necessary to turn it into a tale from the Brothers Grimm? “If they don’t get married by the time they are one and twenty, Longbourn will go POOF! and Mr. Collins will turn into a frog! Oh wait, that already happened…”

And none of them are going to inherit his estate whether they get married or not! ARGH! *beats silly book into primary colored pulp with Cluebat of Janeite Righteousness*

Well, this oughta blow up the Jane Austen Internets for a couple of days.

Andrew Davies told the Western Mail that he plans to add to Willoughby’s backstory–particularly, it seems, to the Eliza Williams story.

And he is also returning to Jane Austen with a version of Sense and Sensibility.

Admitting that there is always more material in an Austen novel he added that there was a certain back story he wanted to add to.

He said, ‘I want to do justice to the back story, the one about Willoughby in particular, which is quite interesting and steamy stuff like a lot of underage sex that goes on and is just talked about. I want to put it on the screen.’

Though Davies joked about his reputation, he added that side of storytelling is something that is often neglected and shied away from. Whether he is writing about heterosexual or homosexual relationships the key for him, he said, was writing about love.

‘I think a lot of people are a bit scared of it and just think to themselves that it’s not important, which it always is,’ he added.

We are of the opinion that such “explorations” belong more properly to the realm of fan fiction and scholarly papers than to film adaptations, which tend to leave out important stuff in favor of this sort of useless crap anyway. Jane Austen most likely made it backstory for a reason. Mr. Davies, here’s a free clue, fortunately for you introduced without the application of the Cluebat of Janeite Righteousness: you are the only one who wants to see Willougby getting it on with a bratty teenager. Seriously. Good job getting yourself some attention, though.

The Hindu has a charming article (despite some slightly tortured syntax) about traveling to Jane Austen’s House Museum in Chawton, Hampshire.

At a cursory level Chawton house represents just the home of a simple writer. A deeper exploration reveals an insightful peak into the private world the author resided in. Viewing all the mementoes, the memorabilia, the flotsam and jetsam of the writer made the narrative theme of her stories come alive. I could almost imagine Emma or Elizabeth (two of Austen’s liveliest heroines) come bounding down the steps or airing their point of view.

We were bemused by the discussion of lunch at the pub across the road:

What could be termed as Chawton High Street had six or seven shops and a bar incongruously named “Gray Fares Bull”. Most from the museum gravitated there. There was raucous cacophony inside the bar. It was clear that the talks centred on Jane Austen. Somebody was reading aloud from Emma. Another argumentative voice lamented why Mansfield Park did not get its due. Yet another voice aggressively dismissed all the movies based on Austen’s books as candyfloss where the wit and irony of the writer were completely lost.

Inevitably, we got drawn into the vigour of the infectious moment. Fortunately, I had my slim folder of favoured readings. One of our group members read an extract from Pico Iyer’s lyrical essay titled “Jane Austen in Calcutta” (The essay was a review of Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy). An elderly English teacher remarked that words of writers do not need visas and immigration stamps; they travel ever so effortlessly.

We almost had lunch at the pub; we will definitely have to stop in there next time! (There’s also a tea room, Cassandra’s Cup, but sadly it was closed the day we visited.)

Scotland on Sunday opines that, while Andrew Davies’ body of work as an adapter of literature great and popular is rightly honored, perhaps it’s time to seek out some new voices.

It is a fair bet that he will make a fine job of A Room With A View, just as he will with a scheduled remake of Brideshead Revisited, Sense and Sensibility, Little Dorrit and Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, all of which are said to be on the Davies to-do list.

Such industry is to be admired, but it doesn’t stop the growing feeling that perhaps some other voices should be heard. Davies will be 70 this year, with all the experience and perspective that that brings. However, it would be interesting to see some of these books through the filter of someone else’s experiences.

We’ve been saying the same thing for a while, not that anyone pays us the least bit of attention. (Hrmph.) Mr. Davies did a great job with P&P and not a bad job with Emma, but it would be nice for Austen fans to see their favorites through other eyes (within limits, of course!). Alas, it’s too late for Northanger Abbey. We loved the recent adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel North and South and would like to see that adapter, Sandy Welch, work on some other classic novels. (And a perusal of the IMDB reveals that Welch is writing the upcoming BBC adaptation of Jane Eyre.)

The article mentions Gurinder Chadha’s multicultural take on P&P, BRIDE AND PREJUDICE:

As a writer and director of Bend It Like Beckham and Bhaji On The Beach, she has plenty of experience in getting to the heart of what a multicultural Britain really means. She also has previous form in translating English literature into new contexts. In 2004, she filmed her own take on one of Austen’s best-loved novels and released Bride and Prejudice, a Bollywood take on the adventures of the Bennets and Mr Darcy. Why stop there? How about a Punjabi Pickwick Papers. Perhaps television commissioners will be more inclined once they have seen the results of her big screen adaptation of the Eighties TV favourite, Dallas.

The beauty of B&P is that it was a new way of looking at P&P without destroying it. Any adapter of Jane Austen should, first and foremost, love the novel, and second, know it inside out, and not be looking to “improve” it somehow. That way lies madness, not to mention the scorn of Janeites.

Alert Janeite Maureen wrote to tell us that the Hampshire County Council is “releasing” copies of Persuasion in public areas across Hampshire as part of a promotion of their library system.

Whoever finds the novels are asked to read them and then place it somewhere else in the county for others to enjoy.

Hampshire County Council is behind the craze known as ‘book crossing’, and said it was aimed at encouraging people to read more.

Richard Ward, the head of libraries, said: ‘This is a simple, but brilliant idea and hopefully will get people reading and encourage people into our libraries.

‘The books can go absolutely anywhere. They could end up on a train to Darlington, but they could be passed around, so as many people as possible read them.

‘If it proves successful then we could consider doing it again, maybe with a completely different style of book.’

The books have been donated by Penguin as part of the company’s 60th anniversary.

Bosses at Hampshire County Council chose Jane Austen’s Persuasion – of which they have 500 copies in their libraries – because she was born in the county in 1775.

Those who come across a copy are asked to log on to the book crossing website.

Then, using the unique identification number on the label inside the book, they can register their comments about the book and say where they found it.

The idea is part of the Huge Hampshire Read campaign, which encourages people to take out more books and runs until July 15.

Incidentally, we are aware of at least one JASNA region that is releasing copies of Jane Austen novels registered with Bookcrossing.com.

Despite it technically being classed as littering, Peter Gibson, of Keep Britain Tidy spokesman, backed the idea.

He said: ‘The only worry would be if a book was in a bad state and the pages were strewn across the street, so people would have to be careful about where they left it and what condition it was in.

‘But we do not want to be killjoys on this.’

Now that is what we call a wise public official!

Maureen also blogged about this effort at Bookglutton.

From a review of a new film in the Guardian:

When Jane Austen was once asked what she wrote about, she is said to have replied: ‘I write about love and money. What else is there to write about?’

Huh? Has anybody else ever heard that quote attributed to Jane Austen?

The delightfully-monikered Commander Coconut puts together his dream dinner table.

Next up on my reading list (I feel like Oprah): Elizabeth Gaskell’s biography of Charlotte Bronte and Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey.

Excellent choices!

They are related by era, of course.

Interestingly, if we were alive in 1840, we would be able to invite Gaskell, Bronte and all these other British authors to dinner: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851), Edward “It was a dark and stormy night” Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873), Gaskell (1810-1865), William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1868), Charles Dickens (1812-1870), Charles Reade (1814-1884), Anthony Trollope (1815-1882), Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855), Emily Bronte (1818-1848), George Eliot (1819-1880) and Anne Bronte (1820-1849).

What’s more we could add a seat at the table for Queen Victoria (1819-1901), and we could put these poets at the card table: William Wordsworth (1770-1850), Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861), Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) and Robert Browning (1812-1889).

And by rights these four should have been living in 1840, all dying young: Jane Austen (1775-1817), Lord Byron (1788-1824), Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), John Keats (1795-1821).

We would pay money to be sitting at table with Jane Austen, Byron and Shelley, just to hear Jane sharpening her claws on those gentlemen.

We think we’ll serve our famous hamloaf and, of course, pie.

Mmmm, pie!

Zoe Williams rants delightfully over the new “chick-lit style” editions of Jane Austen’s novels in the Guardian.

There’s one good reason why Austen ought not to be repackaged as a chick-lit author, and this is that the defining feature of chick-lit is that it’s not very complicated. It’s nothing to do with a lady point of view, or whether there are hunky men in the books, or whether these characters do the nasty with each other; we can take sex as given in almost all books. Austen, on the other hand, is complicated; to rebrand her in pink is like hiding peas under chips.

Pretty much, yes. We are, however, interested in seeing how well these sell–and whether they will be selling to readers who are otherwise unaware of Jane Austen, or didn’t want to try her books before.

May 28: ETA: Here’s another article in the Guardian that says pretty much what we said just above:

I’m pleased to see the new editions are alluring. Let’s hope they reach people who haven’t picked up an Austen novel since school but loved Keira Knightley’s turn as Lizzie Bennet.

Although you’d think they would have bought the edition with Keira Knightley on the cover.

And batten down the hatches, O lovers of classic lit–they’re not stopping at Jane!

Bloomsbury is also getting in on the act, rejacketing some classics for the teenage market. Six novels - Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, Frankenstein, David Copperfield and Treasure Island - will be given newspaper-style end sections with social and historical contexts, including fashion columns and “breaking news” of contemporary wars. Introductions will be replaced by chatty “Why you should read this …” recommendations from teen authors.

We cannot WAIT to see the “fashion columns” from Jane Eyre; perhaps written by Blanche Ingram? Or written by Mrs. Rochester, sniping about Blanche dressing like a tramp, perhaps? “Showing off her ample charms to Mr. Rochester! How shall he resist her?” Tee-hee!

Alert Janeite Sumita wrote to tell us that Wymering Manor, a house once owned by Jane Austen’s brother Admiral Sir Francis Austen, is for sale, and will most likely be purchased by the Portsmouth Society and the Hampshire Buildings Preservation Trust. The house is rumored to be haunted, and the Trust will turn it into a hotel catering to enthusiasts for the paranormal.

Does anyone know if this is the same house that Frank called Portsdown Lodge? Here is a reference to that house from Jane Austen’s Sailor Brothers:

During these years on shore several honours fell to his share. He had been awarded his C. B. in 1815, on the institution of that distinction. In 1825 he was appointed Colonel of Marines, and in 1830 Rear-Admiral. About the same time he purchased Portsdown Lodge, where he lived for the rest of his life. This property is now included within the lines of forts for the defence of Portsmouth, and was bought for that purpose by the Government some years before his death.

Sue Hutchison of Mercury News wonders

how Jane Austen would define her books if she were writing them today. Would her publisher’s marketing department insist that “Sense and Sensibility” be retitled “Elinor Dashwood’s Diary?”

While we agree with the basic thrust of the article, that chick lit is a broad term that includes books of all quality levels (though we found The Nanny Diaries overhyped, tiresome and immature), we have said before and still think that, despite claims by authors in various genres, were Jane Austen publishing her books today, they would not be considered genre works such as romance novels or chick lit. Most likely they would be considered mainstream commercial books. Oprah might even have been persuaded to feature one…maybe Persuasion, if one spun it to revolve around Louisa’s fall and recovery or Anne and Wentworth’s long separation and joyous reunion. (”Did you find it anticlimatic, audience? Didn’t you want them to just KISS already? Right there in the middle of Cheap-street?”)

After reading our post about the new Harper Lee biography, Alert Janeite Lorraine sent a link to the 1964 interview in which Miss Lee said she wanted to be “the Jane Austen of south Alabama.”

As you know, the South is still made up of thousands of tiny towns. There is a very definite social pattern in these towns that fascinates me. I think it is a rich social pattern. I would simply like to put down all I know about this because I believe that there is something universal in this little world, something decent to be said for it, and something to lament in its passing.

In other words all I want to be is the Jane Austen of south Alabama.

Everything is better in context, isn’t it?

When we reviewed Jane Austen’s Guide to Dating a while back, we remarked that reading the advice contained therein was like receiving a letter full of good advice from Aunt Jane. In Dear Jane Austen, Patrice Hannon has gone one better and provided exactly that: a series of letters in Jane Austen’s voice, full of common sense and bracing admonitions, not just on romantic matters but embracing other aspects of life on which modern women might need advice, from financial to fashion to family relations, illustrating the advice with examples from her own novels.

In the wrong hands, such an endeavour could turn revoltingly twee, but Dr. Hannon has a sure grasp of the tone and subject matter. A college professor who has “taught Jane Austen’s novels to hundreds of students” according to her bio blurb, Dr. Hannon knows her Austen and aptly applies the novels to the situation of each applicant for advice, reinforcing each “lesson” with a boxed aphorism (”Jane Austen says: A heroine needs good friends as much as she needs a hero”). (more…)

Meg Cabot, author of the teen novel The Princess Diaries, reveals an early love for Jane:

As a teen, the tall, effusive 39-year-old native of Bloomington, Ind., was a self-described geek who made frequent pilgrimages to the local library in pursuit of air conditioning and emerged with a career founded on her favorite summertime authors: Jane Austen, Judy Blume and Barbara Cartland.

In an odd little quirk, Anne Hathaway, who starred in Disney’s movie version of The Princess Diaries, is of course slated to play Miss Austen in BECOMING JANE.

Review by TeresaAF

Among the plethora of Jane Austen novel retellings, sequels, and completions, there are several things that irritate me and other Janeites to no end. Capital amongst these offenses has to be misspelled names and places. These stories are often peppered with various misspellings of the surname “Bennett” or of the Darcy estate “Pemberly,” which I find especially hard to forgive.

Thankfully, Sally Smith O’Rourke, author of The Man Who Loved Jane Austen, (not to be confused with the novel of the same name by Ray Smith) seems to have taken great care to not infuriate us by getting the spelling of these names correct. Unfortunately, the author chose to populate her story with character names straight out of Jane Austen’s own books or from among her Chawton relations. (more…)

The South Florida Sun-Sentinel is amused at the way we Janeites have collectively swooned at the feet of Miami Heat guard Dwyane Wade after he chose Pride and Prejudice as his favorite classic novel.

In his third season as the Miami Heat’s superstar guard, Dwyane Wade picked up some unexpected fans when he made Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice his recommended book as part of Penguin Classics’ campaign to promote literacy in partnership with the NBA.

Wade, 24, who credited a schoolteacher for her “awesome” reading of the book, said its themes of class struggle and racism spoke to him as a kid growing up on Chicago’s South Side.

Austen fans who had never heard of Wade pronounced him their favorite player. Joan Klingel Ray, president of the Jane Austen Society of North America, is planning to make him an honorary member of the 3,000-member society.

“In choosing Jane Austen, he shows he’s a very smart man,” Ray said. “Understanding Jane Austen really requires great wit, great insight.”

Well, really, what did they expect?

(And since when is racism a theme in P&P?)

Elizabeth Garvie, who played Elizabeth Bennet in P&P1, and her husband, Anton Rodgers, will appear in “A Celebration of Jane Austen” as part of the Buckingham Festival Fortnight, July 8 to 23, 2006.

Playwright Geetika Lizardi wrote to tell us that she has collaborated with composer Michelle Lord to develop a musical from an award-winning screenplay she wrote about Jane Austen’s life. The musical, called simply JANE, will be showcased at Artrix in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire on June 23-24, 2006 to get audience reaction and they hope to move to London after working on it a bit more. From Geetika’s e-mail:

I’ve been a Jane Austen fan since childhood and this project began as a feature film script called “JANE” that I won a few awards for in 2004 before optioning it to First Serve Entertainment. Of course that’s around the time “BECOMING JANE” was announced so I decided then to adapt my script for stage. By all accounts, “BECOMING JANE” is a great script, so I’m glad it’s getting made. However, it does sound limited in scope — just Jane and Tom’s relationship — and I strongly feel that there’s so much more to Jane’s story that deserves to be told! Her choices later in life, moving to Bath & saying “no” to Harris for example, are tremendously significant and moving, especially when set to music!

We could not agree more. Who needs a Made Up Story when the real thing is so very interesting? And what a fantastic opportunity for real Janeites to be involved in a story about Jane. We hope that some of our readers get to see the show, and do report back to us!

The actress Maggie Grace, formerly of the TV show LOST, told Esquire magazine that her idea of the true definition of manhood was Mr Darcy while she was growing up. So does that mean she’s over it now? And if not, the line forms to the right. No pushing, ladies.

Alert Janeite Deborah wrote to let us know that Anthony Lane’s profile of travel writer Patrick Leigh Fermor in this week’s New Yorker contains a Jane Austen reference. The article is not available online, but Deborah sent us the following tidbit:

The gist of the story is that Fermor (aged 90 or so) is about to take an overnight ferry trip somewhere and Lane offers to get him a cabin so he won’t have to sleep on deck. Fermor declines, saying that he has a bottle of wine and a copy of Persuasion, so what more could he need to pass a moonlit night in the open air? Sounds about right to me.

Sounds about right to us, too!

Also in the New Yorker, review of a new biography of the author Harper Lee (who wrote the Editrix’s favorite non-Austen book of all time) refers to Miss Lee’s one-time wish to become “the Jane Austen of the South.” We understand that the notoriously reclusive author is a Friend of Jane.