Review by TeresaAF

I am reminded of a story: young woman meets handsome though unpromising young man whom she promptly abandons for what she assumes is a sure thing, only to discover soon after that the sure thing was more to her detriment than to her benefit.

The above is not from Jane Austen’s Persuasion; it is a story out of my own life, and I would certainly never presume to fancy myself as having the sweetness of temper of Anne Elliot or that my hopeless young man even remotely resembled in Frederick Wentworth in word or deed.

Yet Paula Marantz Cohen gives us a good balance in Jane Austen in Scarsdale or Love, Death, and the SATs by replicating a similar Persuasionesque situation, though not necessarily feeling obligated to fashion her heroine into the identical image of Sir Walter Elliot’s second daughter. (more…)

Not too much fussing in the press after NA07. While AustenBlog visitors seem mostly pleased with it, the newspaper writers are not as impressed.

The Times didn’t hate it, but thinks they missed the point.

Some say that Jane Austen cannot be trusted in Davies’s hands, that her two inches of ivory (as she described her canvas) get crushed in his ape-like mitts. This underestimates the robustness of masterpieces and misjudges Austen, who wielded a pen so sharp that it could hit Davies where it hurt.

[. . .]

Davies was not wrong to source her wanton imagination in a wannabe libido. He overegged it, of course, because he is Andrew Davies. While we never exactly see her reading one-handed, there is no doubting why she is so annoyed when her sisters interrupt her alone with a book in the long grass.

Oh dear Jane. Poor, dear, sweet, naïve Catherine. What has been done to you? (more…)

Michael Gove points out in The Times that Jane Austen doesn’t really HAVE to look good to sell books.

Jane Austen has never been hotter. ITV, our most populist terrestrial channel, is giving up its peak Sunday-evening slots to adaptations of her novels. Anne Hathaway stars as Austen, alongside Maggie Smith, in the big-budget Hollywood biopic Becoming Jane, while Pride and Prejudice is to be remade as a time-travel saga. And the novels themselves are shifting more quickly than you can say Bridget Jones.

Yet despite all this, publishers have still felt the need to give Jane a heat magazine-style makeover. The traditional portrait of Austen on the cover of her novels has been retouched to remove her lace nightcap, enhance her cheeks with some beauty-salon rouging and, to complete the Beckhamisation, hair extensions have been added.

Why, you have to ask, is this sort of treatment necessary? Haven’t the publishers asked themselves why Austen’s novels are so popular at the moment?

The controlled irony, precise social observation and acuity of Austen’s writing offers us a refuge from the moronic inferno of modern trash culture.

Haven’t seen the new movies yet, have you? Ooops.

There is, of course, a great irony in all this and one that Austen would instantly recognise. The whole of her literary output constitutes an extensive, nuanced yet repeated warning against judging by appearances.

For the win!