We heard from Sarah S.G. Frantz, who has written a foreword for a reprint of Jane Austen: Her Life and Letters by William and Richard Austen-Leigh, just published by Barnes & Noble Books. This is one of the first biographies of Jane Austen and was written using the letters and other papers collected by the Austen family. Austen scholar Deirdre Le Faye later expanded the book into Jane Austen: A Family Record (the most useful book in the Editrix’s Austen library), but this is the original. Read Dr. Frantz’s foreword online. The book should be available in all Barnes & Noble stores.

Dr. Frantz, an assistant professor of English at Fayetteville State University, also wrote a foreword for the Barnes & Noble edition of Love and Freindship and Other Early Works.

A brand new book, though perhaps covering familiar ground, is Jane Austen in Bath by Katharine Reeve, which will be published next month but is available for preorder on Amazon. From the description:

Jane Austen in Bath: Walking Tours of the Writer’s City is a beautifully illustrated book organized into four walking tours around the city of Bath–where she set both Northanger Abbey and Persuasion–two novels that mirrored her own experience: that of an impressionable, optimistic young girl hoping to meet the man she would marry and later, that of a mature woman disappointed in love. It was in Bath that many of Austen’s own romantic adventures and misadventures occurred, and this book artfully weaves together the story of Austen’s life there with those of her beloved characters.

This guidebook describes the places frequented by Austen and her characters. Readers can stroll along the shady, tree-lined walk where Anne Elliot met Captain Wentworth after he returned from seven years at sea, and visit the galleries that hosted the glittering balls where the impressionable young Catherine Moreland (sic) made her debut.

Bath is an exquisite, perfectly preserved Georgian town located in the stunning countryside just an hour and a half from London. It was a spa town in Austen’s day and still is. The streets, crescents, gardens, and buildings look almost exactly the same as they did then. Many of the places that she frequented are still there–visitors can still buy the traditional Sally Lunn rolls at the same bakery/café that Austen frequented; enter the famous Pump Rooms and Assembly Rooms where she drank the waters, gossiped, and danced; stroll the unique Georgian crescents and pleasure gardens where she enjoyed fireworks and lavish public breakfasts; and see the homes Austen and her family lived in, some of which are now open to the public.

We love the idea of having the walking tours in Bath, though it’s hard to walk anywhere in Bath without seeing something that reminds us of Jane Austen. We still remember taking the general walking tour of Bath and looking up idly and seeing EDGAR’S BUILDINGS etched across a row of Georgian buildings and breaking into giggles. However, having them organized is certainly an excellent idea!

The book will be on sale a little earlier in the U.K., in time to purchase the book during the Jane Austen Festival in Bath, where the author will be the guide for one of the walks.

These are the four walks in the book, according to the publisher:

Walk One - Jane’s First Visits to the Georgian City of Bath

Walk Two - The Move to Bath: Sydney Gardens and the New Town

Walk Three - Writing Again: Bath’s Entertainments and the Lower Town

Walk Four - Shopping, Fashion, and Dancing: Bond Street and Milsom Street to Camden Crescent

In case you didn’t see the edit to our original post, the Clerkenwell Films site (coincidentally, once again, after we asked for confirmation on the blog! How lovely and, um, prescient of them ;-)) have confirmed that Rupert Penry-Jones will star in PERSUASION 2007, along with Julia Davis. No word on which role they will have, though by now we can safely assume that Mr. Penry-Jones will play Captain Wentworth. We think Julia Davis looks just like Miss Elliot ought.

Perhaps we’re just getting jaded. An article about Anne Hathaway and THE DEVIL WORE PRADA (which we guess is just opening in the U.K.) has the obligatory tidbit about BECOMING JANE.

Then, in Becoming Jane, she’ll be seen tackling the sad love life of Jane Austen as the celebrated British author is wooed by a passionate but impoverished young man, played by Scots star James McAvoy.

Annes believe people are eager to learn more about the author’s life following the big-screen success last year of her classic tale Pride and Prejudice, which starred British beauty Keira Knightley.

She said: “I know that people are open to it and it’s a very different story.

“I just wish Keira hadn’t been so damned wonderful in it!

“Now I have to bring it even more.”

The film has already caused controversy, with Austen fans saying Anne is too pretty to play the supposedly plain writer.

Anne said: “Part of me was thrilled by the criticism - I’ve never been too pretty for anything.”

The admission just goes to show the lack of confidence the young star still has.

Were we the cynical type, we might think it shows that the young star has been taking the Crash Davis Course in Talking to Reporters. “Just glad to be here, hope I can help the ballclub.” Repeat as necessary. *yawn* And as far as we’re concerned, the “controversy” has nothing to do with Miss Hathaway being “too pretty,” but the film being “too MADE UP STORY.”

Alert Janeite Allison T sent us a link to an article from the Eye Weekly proposing an all-Austen television network. Sounds like a grand idea to us!

# Movie: * Emma Pinochet (1996, Comedy) Courtney Cox, Tom Bosley. Beautiful young girl imitates dictator father by bossing her friends around. When a peasant proposes to her girlfriend, Emma has him flown over the Pacific in a helicopter and thrown to the sharks. She eventually learns the error of her bossy ways, and marries her father’s security advisor. Directed by Amy Heckerling. (To 9:45 p.m.) 85672

We would watch that.

$ The Simpsons Bart is sent home from school after insisting that Jane Austen has a bionic eye. (CC) 50137

Doesn’t she?

# Movie: ** Pride And Prejudice XXIV: Massacre At Longbourn High (1996, Horror) Jennifer Cooke, Thom Matthews. Lizzie discovers Wickham hiding in the girl’s changeroom, wearing a hockey mask and carrying a chainsaw dripping with fresh blood. Wickham claims he is there to catch Darcy, the captain of the football team, who has been murdering the cheerleaders of Longbourn High. Directed by Tom McLoughlin. (To 6:30 a.m.) 31184729

*falls over laughing*

Twilight Zone Romance-loving waitress wishes herself back into Regency England and is forced to work in textile mill. (CC) 48592

No no no no no…that’s the ALL-ELIOT network, silly.

Jane’s making it into the papers quite a bit these days…we are definitely entering (or perhaps firmly within) another Age of Austen.

The Independent mentions Jane Austen in an article about vegetarianism, of all things.

Medical men recommended meatless diets for less lofty reasons. George Cheyne, a celebrated 18th-century physician, was perhaps the earliest “diet doctor”. Grossly obese in younger days, Cheyne learnt of the virtues of an abstemious life from mystical texts. Resorting to milk, seeds and roots, he quickly lost some of his surplus pounds and became an enthusiastic advocate of “low diets”. A prolific writer and busy practitioner, Cheyne claimed that meat damaged the nervous system and forced his wealthy, overweight patients to switch to vegetables.

One of those patients was his publisher, the novelist Samuel Richardson. His famous heroines Pamela and Clarissa were dedicated vegetarians and lived very well on modest quantities of “bread, butter, water, tea, milk, salad, toast and chocolate”.

Jane Austen derided Cheynesque diets in Emma but even she admitted that “composition seems to me Impossible, with a head full of Joints of Mutton”.

She was talking about housekeeping, actually, not eating meat. Way to stretch a point, dude.

In the Times, “Xanadu,” the pseudonymous author of the Single in the City column (paging Bridget Jones, Miss Jones, please pick up the white courtesy phone), writes about a Jane Austen moment that she shared with her mother.

Naturally my mother could not miss the opportunity to highlight the fact that if I was in any way normal I would be wanting to cook, clean and care for a husband who might have a lovely house too.

Tears came to her eyes as she got ready for some dreadful rural gossipy dinner party. She blubbed: “Do you know how embarrassing it is for me to go to these events and be the only mother with an unmarried daughter … ” her voice tailing off sadly. It was such a timeless comment. She was Mrs Bennet and I was Lizzie, although most of the time I felt more like Jane Austen herself, sitting on the window seat gazing out through the rain-slashed window panes.

The only difference was I had a laptop teetering on my lap.

The laptop is simply the modern equivalent of the writing desk.