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?