vivavocebooks.com, a new company offering high-quality, affordable audio downloads of classic books, is kicking off their offerings with an excellent selection: an unabridged audiobook of Pride and Prejudice. The downloads are available in MP3 and AAC for iPod formats and are performed by a professional actor.

They have offered two free downloads for AustenBlog readers. We decided that you should have to work for your prize, so send your answers to the following questions to editor at austenblog dot com (that’s an e-mail address, read it out loud) by midnight U.S. Eastern time on Tuesday, May 16, 2006. All correct answers will be put into a drawing to win the free downloads. Please be aware that we will share the winners’ e-mail addresses with the audiobook company as they are used to download the e-books; their site states they will not disclose the e-mail address to any other parties.

On to the questions!

1. Which character in Pride and Prejudice says after first meeting Mr. Darcy, “Upon the whole, I am much pleased with him”?

2. How old is Georgiana Darcy when Elizabeth meets her in Derbyshire?

3. Where did Mary King go when she left Meryton?

4. Whom did Kitty and Mary Bennet eventually marry, according to Jane Austen?

5. From whence did Mr. Collins take his coy reference to Charlotte’s pregnancy as “a young olive-branch”?

Good luck!

Two recent books on abstract concepts use Jane Austen as an example.

The Moral Imagination by Gertrude Himmelfarb discusses moral judgment in various historical figures and authors.

But that’s not a criticism; this book about the fascinating complexity of moral judgment in a world riven with conflict and contradiction is well worth the read for anyone interested in history, politics, philosophy or literature.
“The current intellectual fashions put a premium on simplicity and activism,” writes Himmelfarb, a much-honored historian. “The subtleties, complications and ambiguities that until recently have been the mark of serious thought are now taken to signify a failure of nerve, a compromise with evil, an evasion of judgment and ‘commitment.’ “

Well, that all sounds very fine indeed, but we were a little confused by the tidbit in the review about Jane Austen.

But Himmelfarb hasn’t written a 19th-century soap opera guide. Her subjects brought this same facility for resolving competing rights and ambiguous wrongs first and foremost to their work.

She discusses Jane Austen’s “Emma” as an example of the moral education of an essentially decent yet self-involved young woman finding her way in early 1800s England.

“It is a drama of manners, with manners in the service of morals,” Himmelfarb writes. “For manners, even more than morals, lend themselves to the subtleties and nuances appropriate to the variety of classes and characters. And manners, more readily than morals, can be taught — as Emma was taught.”

Does that make any bloody sense whatsoever? We suppose it might be better not taken out of context as it is in the review.

Jane moves up in the world to the “genius” category in Paul Johnson’s new book Creators: From Chaucer and Dürer to Picasso and Disney. Virginia Woolf famously wrote of Jane Austen, “Of all great writers, she is the most difficult to catch in the act of greatness.” Johnson, according to the reviewer, does no better than did Miss Woolf.

Or when he is issuing such Coles Notes-worthy banalities as, “Victor Hugo was a creative artist on the grandest possible scale with the widest scope, and the highest productivity,” or, “[Jane Austen's] early death, like that of so many creative people of her era . . . leaves us with a fierce longing for the works she would undoubtedly have produced to delight us.”

Again, hard to tell from a quote taken out of context, but we have to agree with the reviewer.

Alert Janeite Sylvia kindly sent us some comments on the stage version of Pride and Prejudice recently staged at the University in Klagenfurt, Austria. We understand that a few AustenBloggers were fortunate enough to attend. –Ed.

This week saw the extraordinary occasion of a stage performance of P&P by the INEPT theatre group at the university in Klagenfurt/Austria, I dare say extraordinary in the German language area.

And the best thing: I was there!!! *happy dance* I am also very happy to share some (first) impressions with you. (more…)