In an article about the upcoming Jane Eyre miniseries, Masterpiece Theatre executive producer Rebecca Eaton mentioned next season’s Jane Austen series, with specific mention of SENSE AND SENSIBILITY 2007.

This arrives a year after another “Masterpiece” mini-series made a huge impact.

“The success of ‘Bleak House’ made a difference,” Eaton says. “All of a sudden, you have a lot of (period pieces) being green-lit.”

Next season, Eaton has a Jane Austen emphasis, including “Sense and Sensibility.”

So all of you who were worried about S&S07 being done in time for the Austen series in the autumn of 2007: be of good cheer. We dare say if the executive producer is not concerned, then we should not be.

P.S. The Editrix is experimenting with moblogging in this post, so if anything looks strange, pray bear with us. If we can make this work, we will be able to more efficiently handle breaking news in the Janeite world.

Review by MJ Ryan

Elizabeth’s spirits soon rising to playfulness again, she wanted Mr. Darcy to account for his having ever fallen in love with her. “How could you begin?” said she. “I can comprehend your going on charmingly, when you had once made a beginning; but what could set you off in the first place?”

“I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.”

This is the closest that Jane Austen ever comes to answering the question that, by the end of Pride and Prejudice, must be on the mind of every reader: when did Darcy fall in love with Elizabeth? This is one of the questions that Pamela Aidan ventures to answer as she fully explores the enigmatic Mr. Darcy in her Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman trilogy. (more…)

Alert Janeite Deborah wrote to tell us about an Austen reference in this week’s New Yorker. We were unable to find it on the magazine Web site, but Deborah kindly sent us the relevant passage.

“Hardy always took care to point out that his father and grandfather were not laborers but master masons, skilled craftsmen with employees of their own. Still, his father did business in a very small way, and his mother, Jemima, had been a domestic servant before she got pregnant and married in a hurry–the wedding took place just over five months before Thomas was born, on June 2, 1840. The Hardys were the kind of people that Jane Austen would never have allowed into her parlor.”

Oh REALLY?

Deborah added, “It’s not clear if this Austen reference is culled from Tomalin (who does, of course, know from JA) or is Kirsch’s own. Either way, it seems to me to suggest a snobbish narrow-mindedness that I don’t associate with JA, however traditional and Tory may have been her attitude toward social hierarchy. But perhaps others will disagree…”

Not the Editrix! One of Jane’s best friends was the governess at her brother’s estate. If Hardy’s parents were vulgar, she might have chosen to not associate with them, but not simply because they were tradesmen. That smacks a bit of Miss Bingley mocking the Gardiners without having met them, in our mind. Gentle Readers?

Alert Janeite Heather L wrote to tell us that Farncombe Estate in the Cotswolds is having a Jane Austen Afternoon on January 28, 2007, at which Angela Day will discuss past and upcoming Austen adaptations.

More Jane Austen on TV. Why? Why not? New adaptations of Northanger Abbey, MansfieldPark and Persuasion are about to appear on our screens in a new series on ITV. Are they still popular or has our appetite for ‘costume drama’ been sated? Is there too much Austen while some writers, such as the Brontes, George Eliot and Thomas Hardy, are almost ignored? What are the problems in adapting a long novel? In this short talk Angela Day will discuss these and other related issues.

There’s more information about the event at the Apt Marketing Web site.

Tickets to this event are a very reasonable £9, which includes tea and sandwiches. Sounds like a great opportunity for our British friends to whet their appetites for the Jane Austen Season.