Alert Janeite and Tilney Fangirl Heather L. has put together an excellent cast page for the upcoming adaptation of NORTHANGER ABBEY. Other actors will, of course, be added as information becomes available, but we rather like her placeholders.

Looks like somebody’s been practicing for the moment when he gets to fulfill the High Priestess’ First Corollary.

Alert Janeite Jan H wrote to tell us about a profile of Linda Berdoll, the author of Mr. Darcy Takes A Wife. We think this auspicious occasion calls for a proper AustenBlog Spork-Fisking™. Hold on to your nonny-nonnies, O Gentle Readers, and keep your sporks in an upright and locked position.

Many of those purchasers feel passionately about the book, which updates “Pride and Prejudice” with copious helpings of sex — sex in the bathtub, sex on a dressing table, sex in a horse-drawn coach.

Sex instead of character development…

Even so, Jane Austen wasn’t the original inspiration for “Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife.” For Linda Berdoll, everything starts with Colin Firth.

Oh, well, there’s a shocker.

Though Ehle gets considerably more screen time than Firth, he steals the movie out from under her.

Um, no. (The Ehle fans may feel free to elaborate.)

Hungry for more, she read and re-read “Pride and Prejudice.”

Might want to try that a few more times, hon. (We read the book in its self-published, ill-spelt incarnation. Anyone who can “read and re-read” P&P and not know Mr. Collins’ Christian name, let alone how to spell Mrs. Darcy’s Christian name or the name of the Darcy estate, is not paying attention. We are even sufficiently generous to spot her Darcy’s mum’s Christian name, as it is mentioned only a few times, but really, the others are fairly obvious.)

Not everyone is thrilled with Berdoll’s work. She gets angry e-mails from women who claim that Darcy wouldn’t engage in premarital sex with a consort, as he does in “Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife.”

“I’m like, get real, lady!” Berdoll says. “A rich man like that, 28 years old! I don’t think I’d want to marry him if he was that innocent that long.”

Ma’am, you might feel that way, but we think Jane Austen, WHO CREATED THE CHARACTER, might disagree.

But he admits that “Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife” didn’t get his mojo working. “In Jane Austen’s novels everything is capped, under control, which generates so much more power,” he says. “Jane Austen’s work is like having a small piece of explosive that is intensified through confinement. Berdoll’s book is the opposite — a firecracker out in the open.”

Well said, sir!

UT’s Lance Bertelsen isn’t offended by all the sex. “I think that the people who get incensed about these books are completely wrong, because I don’t think either of these books have anything to do with Jane Austen,” he says

They have Jane Austen’s characters in them, so they have everything in the world to do with Jane Austen.

One of the difficulties in writing Austen pastiches (and we have written them, so we know) is not so much in imitating the language, it is in making the characters behave like Jane Austen’s characters. And a sexually incontinent Darcy is not the Darcy that Jane Austen created. He might be the Darcy that Ms. Berdoll imagined, fired by Colin Firth’s smoldering glances and well-fitted breeches, but we think that Jane thought a little better of him; that he had more control over his bodily functions than the average tomcat. And we are astonished to learn that so many readers think that such a trait makes Darcy more attractive. He’s intelligent, handsome, rich, considerate (once he warms up a bit), attentive to his duty, and loves a woman so much that he makes himself a better man to earn her approval. Isn’t that enough?

Alert Janeite Lorna wrote to tell us that the Winterthur Museum in Delaware will have an exhibition called “Fashion in Film: Period Costumes for the Screen,” featuring film costumes made by the British company Cosprop. The exhibition will include costumes from the film version of SENSE AND SENSIBILITY. The exhibition will run from September 30, 2006 through January 7, 2007.

“What dreadful Hot weather we have!–It keeps one in a continual state of Inelegance.” - from a letter to Cassandra Austen, September 18, 1796

(All the newspaper stories including this quote are not getting it quite right.)

You don’t need a sexy swimsuit, according to a new poll; just read a good book, like one of Jane Austen’s, and attract good company!

Seeing someone reading a book they liked led to 30 per cent of respondents flirting or striking up a conversation with them.

But amorous readers would be well advised to make their choice of reading material before they get to the airport bookshop, with Mills & Boon and John Grisham rated a turn-off, the poll of more than 2,200 adults discovered.

The representative survey of adults, conducted by YouGov, found it was tales of old-fashioned romance and hardship that were the most arousing with classics by authors such as Jane Austen and Charles Dickens offering Great Expectations of love.