We confess we’re still a little rankled at Rupert Penry-Jones’ “those Austen people” comment the other day, and our good opinion, once lost, is lost forever. Well, maybe not forever forever.

SPOOKS star Rupert Penry-Jones isn’t ashamed to admit he was overcome with emotion after filming his latest role.

“I’ve seen it twice now and there’s been tears flooding down my face both times. It’s a different, gorgeous film.”

Hmph. Well.

“Jane Austen’s characters wouldn’t kiss in public. That was Sally and me being naughty, really,” he explains.

“In the script they are just about to kiss, and then they realise where they are and they can’t. We thought the way to get that was to just about kiss, and hold it and then actually kiss, but cut the film before we actually kiss.

“But when the producers saw the scene in the rushes they decided the kiss was so good, and we did it so well, they put it in the film. It was never meant to be there. It was just us using it as an excuse to have a kiss,” he jokes.

Awwww.

There are also compensations, especially when playing a part where women swoon all over you.

“It was fantastic. That’s why I took the job,” he laughs. “There’s 30 pages in the script of everyone saying how good looking, clever and funny Wentworth is. So all you have to do is walk in front of the camera and say Hello!

Hello!

“I loved the costumes. They make you stand up straight - the trousers are very tight.

HELLO!

I had the boots made especially for me. I have got quite big feet

HELLO THERE SAILOR!

and it’s difficult to get boots that fit. I tried to take them away with me but they wouldn’t let me have them. My other half was very upset.”

We’ll bet!

In other P07 news, the DVD cover is online, and looks terrific.

Thanks to Cub Reporter Heather L. and Alert Janeites Sylvia M., Rose and Maureen for the links to the article and cover!

ETA March 6 8:52 p.m. EST: But wait, there’s more Rupert! (from the writer’s blog)

Hesperus Press, “committed to the rediscovery of unjustly neglected classics,” has published several of Jane Austen’s lesser-known works: The Watsons, with a foreword by the novelist Kate Atkinson; Lady Susan; Lesley Castle, with a foreword by Zoe Heller; and Love and Freindship with a foreword by Fay Weldon.

James McAvoy, star of Becoming Jane, has a Little Problem. It seems the poor dear *whispers* can’t read.

He’s to appear in “Becoming Jane”, a lauded biopic of Jane Austen. Not that he’s a total fan. He tells Eve magazine that Austen’s genre-forming classic Northanger Abbey is “one of the worst books I’ve ever read in my life -full of badly written giggly girls”. Isn’t that the point of Jane Austen?

So unfortunate. One never knows what to do in these situations. Buy flowers? Bake a cake? Beat him senseless with the Cluebat of Janeite Righteousness? It’s a puzzle.

ETA: But wait, there’s more! The BBC has a report on the film premiere, including this comment from Mr. McAvoy:

He said: “Definitely without a doubt she had a relationship with this man and they did many outrageous things for the time such as holding hands in public and doing more than five dances in a row.

More than five dances? We were not aware there was an official count anywhere.

“Shortly after he broke up the relationship, she burned all the letters from him.”

So what did Noted Austen Scholar Anne Hathaway spend a month in British Library reading then? Really, where did they get some of this half-baked information?

Becoming Jane has had its London premiere and will soon be released upon an unsuspecting world, and the media frenzy is in full swing. Gentle Reader Laura wrote to ask us if anyone had compared the upcoming film to Shakespeare in Love? We responded that it has been considered in past posts, but that we contend that Shakespeare in Love was presented as a fictional, farcical, fun Made Up Story, whereas Becoming Jane is a Made Up Story being presented as, if not absolute fact, then “probably true.” We would welcome a truly Shakespeare in Love-like treatment of Jane, if it was fun, intelligent, and irreverent but not disrespectful (which is possible).

Case in point: The Independent titled its Sunday story on the upcoming film as “Jane Austen: Scenes from a provincial life.” Despite the unfortunate title, the article by Frances Wilson is quite good. The film is mentioned briefly, the theory presented–correctly–as one possible explanation for something we will never know. (more…)

JASNA has announced that its Web site’s news page is now available via RSS. Bookmark the feed or add it to your RSS aggregator for the fastest and easiest way to learn about new site content, JASNA events and publications, and other information.

JASNA is in the process of adding some great new content to the site, such as a comprehensive listing of regional events. The site already has a concise biography of Jane Austen, a chronology of her life and work, information on the organization’s Annual General Meetings, book reviews, and what we think is the real hidden gem of the site: Persuasions On-Line, and online versions of many articles from the hard copy journal, Persuasions. jasna.org is not just a basic organization site; it’s a true resource for Janeites. The Editrix encourages AustenBlog readers all over the world to check it out.

Amy H. has written to tell us that she is auctioning a custom Barbie doll dressed as Elizabeth Bennet on eBay. Amy tells us that rather than attempting to copy a costume that Jennifer Ehle wore in P&P95 as she has done in the past, she created a dress out of her own imagining of what Lizzy would wear. She is dressed for a country walk, with a pretty ribbon-trimmed bonnet, a lace shawl, and basket of roses. We like the bit of lace finishing off the bottom of her gown; one hopes she does not get it six inches deep with mud!

Just get it out of your system. The Sunday Herald examines the strange behavior of those odd Jane Austen fans, rather with the air of National Geographic examining an unusual species of chimpanzee.

“They’re really into it,” says local historian Jane Hurst. This seems to be an understatement, given her descriptions of these conventions, though any criticism of the cult is couched in careful terms. “The first time I went, there were several Americans completely dressed the part. Unfortunately, the ladies were not young or slim and the gentlemen didn’t look much like Mr Darcy. I’d not been to anything like that before and I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The way people talk about the characters, one doesn’t know if they’ve quite separated fiction from reality.”

Pray excuse up whilst we bind up our wounds. If those are careful terms, we’d hate to hear her speak bluntly. We also were not aware there was an age or weight requirement to wear Regency gowns. And we know some Brits who are just as into dressing up in period clothing (and danged serious about it) as the Yanks!

Despite putting herself forward as secretary of the local branch of the Jane Austen society “like a mug”, Hurst differs from other Janeites in that she is decidedly cool on the novels.

No comment.

The rest of this article is too depressing to parse. We suspect that at least some of these people were misrepresented in the article (one certainly hopes so). Yes, some of us have a little fun with our Austen fandom. It is not a crime, and as weird goes, it is way down on the list. If we are wild beasts, we cannot help it.

A first edition of Pride and Prejudice will be up for auction on March 8. We would just LOVE to have it at the Jane Austen Memorial Library and Reading Room, and promise to take excellent care of it. Dorothy swears she will dust it every single day. So drop your shillings in the cup going ’round and we’ll bid on it; after all, it’s estimated to go for the positively bargain-basement price of £12,000. No word on the condition of the book, but usually they go for six figures, and who can pass up such a bargain? Dig deep, now!