Not to be outdone by the current deluge of time-traveling Janeites, the West Coast Bureau Correspondent discovered a pair of long stays which, if laced too tightly, send the wearer back to Georgian/Regency England … but rather than follow the herd to chase after Mr. Darcy, she recalled her duty to review the following:

Chapbooks (unbound, usually under 24 pages) and bluebooks (blue paper cover, 36-72 pages) were inexpensive, popular reading material before and through Jane Austen’s time. The Veiled Picture, originally published in 1802 and now reissued by Valancourt Books, is a “bluebook” edition of Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho, intended to make fashionable Gothic literature accessible to the common reader.

In this unofficial abridgement, the names of places and characters have been changed (Valancourt’s edition includes a handy reference guide). All the descriptions and philosophical reveries on landscape, the picturesque, morality, or poetry have been removed. What remains reads like a 72-page (!) screenplay treatment: breathless, nonstop action and, as Henry Tilney notes, hair-raising. It’s a wild ride. If Eleanor stepped away even for five minutes she would miss much of the story:

Beautiful young Emily D’Orville lives a peaceful existence in the French countryside with her loving parents. But when tragedy strikes and leaves her an orphan, Emily is separated from her true love Angereau and imprisoned in the Castle of Gorgono, her sinister uncle’s fortress in the Apennine Mountains. Can Emily escape the horrors of Gorgono, or will she fall victim to Signor Androssi and his murderous friends? And what is the mystery of the horrifying picture that hangs in a locked chamber, shrouded in a black veil?

Valancourt’s edition, edited by Jack G. Voller, includes a new introduction and notes, contemporary reviews and reactions to the original Mysteries of Udolpho, short essays on Gothic architecture and the sublime, an essay by Ann Radcliffe on the role of supernatural in poetry, and a comparison of selected passages from Udolpho with their abbreviated bluebook counterparts: see how 547 words can be compressed to 15! Last, if The Veiled Picture excites your curiosity (as it did mine), the select bibliography is an excellent resource to learn more about Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho, and Gothic bluebooks.

I’m reluctant to recommend The Veiled Picture as a first experience with Udolpho, especially to those who wish to learn more about how it relates to Northanger Abbey. The original Udolpho is a more accurate place to start, because Jane Austen alluded to and parodied more than the plot alone. Udolpho’s style, subtleties, and contemplation of aesthetics immerse the reader in the Gothic environment, especially the suspense and terror Radcliffe sought to create, and all these elements are addressed in Northanger Abbey.

Nevertheless, Valancourt Books’ edition of The Veiled Picture is a fascinating little book in its own right: a peek into the past at the height of the Gothic craze and the chapbook/bluebook tradition.

Review by Diana Birchall

Laurie Viera Rigler’s Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict is forthcoming from Dutton in August. I’ve just finished reading an advance copy, and thought you would like to hear about it as it’s quite a charming novel. You may be put off by hearing that it’s a form of “time travel” novel, which conjures up images of Harlequin romances where our heroine gets boinked by a Regency dude, but disabuse yourself – this is the luxury model of the genre. The difference is that Rigler writes beautifully and is a true genuine Austen addict herself, with the result that when she does the early 19th century characters, the purist doesn’t wince. Equally engaging is her 21st century American heroine and narrator, Courtney Stone, who finds herself in the body and life of a nineteenth-century woman named Jane Mansfield. Courtney’s sharp and slangy modern young sensibility contrasts piquantly and amusingly with the new (or old) world where she finds herself. Rigler has an excellent eye for period detail, and is able to produce a highly effective novelistic “you-are-there” experience. The heroine’s reactions to the realities of 19th century life, not just the cumbersome bathing methods and medical horrors but the behavior and assumptions of the people she is suddenly forced to live with, are extremely vividly told. To travel with Courtney as Jane into the world of another Jane (and they do come briefly and satisfyingly face to face) is quite pleasurable, and I’d have no hesitation about recommending this book to those who’d enjoy a lightly and deftly orchestrated visit to 1813.

It is easy for the cynical Janeite (who, us? cynical? pish!) to get burned out on Pride and Prejudice sequels, especially when there are so many of them, and so many of them are quite bad. (Can you say Emma Tennant? We thought you could.) But we keep reading them, because we know that there are a few jewels in the sludge. We’re not sure that Mr. Darcy Presents His Bride is a jewel exactly, but we think it will appeal to a wide cross-section of Janeites.

The book starts pretty much where P&P left off, with Elizabeth and Darcy preparing for their marriage and removal to the elegance of their family party at Pemberley. Unfortunately they are immediately troubled by the problem of whether Mrs. Darcy will be accepted by Mr. Darcy’s neighbors, friends, and family, especially those under the influence of Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Working through these issues, and the romantic entanglements of those characters still single at the end of P&P, form the rest of the story.

A novel by its nature must have conflict, and in our view the problem with many Austen sequels is subverting the happy-ever-after endings of the originals by making the conflict come from within the Darcys’ relationship. Happily, Ms. Halstead gives the Darcys mostly external conflict, allowing the reader to see them as a loving newlywed couple, which is just what we want. The authoress seems, to us, to have her finger on the pulse of the Lizzy/Darcy zeitgeist: there is a touch of angst and melodrama (which a certain constituency of fans seems to like) and the Darcys are sexy without being explicit, a circumstance sure to please a wide audience.

We could wish there were less swanning about with earls and marchionesses in Town during the Season, which is rather more Georgette Heyer than Jane Austen in our opinion (and we love Heyer), but at least our sensible Lizzy tires of the ton quickly and pines for Pemberley, and her husband is happy to oblige her. The writing is sharp and intelligent, with no twee attempts to imitate Austen’s voice. The authoress trusts her own style, and rightly so.

Mr. Darcy Presents His Bride is a comfortable sort of book, not spectacular but solid and enjoyable. We think Team Darcy will love it; we suspect the authoress is a teammate herself, and gives her audience just what they are looking for.

Note: The book was formerly published under the title A Private Performance.

We wrote a little about the new graphic novel Gothic Classics Volume 14 yesterday, but received more information about it today, and since it is Books are Nice week here at AustenBlog, thought we would post a follow-up. First, from the publisher’s official press release:

Eureka Productions is pleased to announce the publication of GOTHIC CLASSICS: Graphic Classics Volume Fourteen, an all-new graphic novel.

GOTHIC CLASSICS is the third multi-author anthology in the GRAPHIC CLASSICS series of adaptations of great literature. The book presents Ann Radcliffe’s archetypal gothic novel “The Mysteries of Udolpho,” adapted by Antonella Caputo and Carlo Vergara. Plus Jane Austen’s gothic parody “Northanger Abbey,” by Trina Robbins and Anne Timmons, and Poe’s “The Oval Portrait,” by Malaysian illustrator Leong Wan Kok. Also “At the Gate,” a canine ghost story by Myla Jo Closser, illustrated by Shary Flenniken, and J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s great vampire tale “Carmilla,” by Rod Lott and Lisa K. Weber. With a dramatic cover painting from “Carmilla” by Lisa K. Weber.

GOTHIC CLASSICS: Graphic Classics Volume Fourteen is available in bookstores, comics shops, or direct from the publisher at http://www.graphicclassics.com.

For a more objective viewpoint, check out the review of the anthology in Publisher’s Weekly:

Ann Radcliffe’s inimitable “Mysteries of Udolpho” is rendered in a faithful, nearly documentary style by Carlo Vergara, while Jane Austen’s play upon the gothic, “Northanger Abbey,” is charmingly illustrated by Anne Timmons.

Sounds like a winner; we cannot wait to spend two days reading it, our hair standing on end the whole time.

Alert Janeite Joan Ellen wrote to tell us that Jane Odiwe, author and illustrator of the lovely Effusions of Fancy, has a book coming out called Lydia’s Story. She has set up a page for the book at her Web site, where she has posted some of her illustrations and wrote a little about the book.

Lydia’s Story is a book I thought could not be written. Who, after all, could like a girl who is badly behaved, who has little regard for propriety and who is described as being vain, ignorant, idle and uncontrolled? I confess I was intrigued by her character and her story, though I resisted putting my ideas down on paper for some time. But Lydia refused to go away and so did the questions I wanted answering. Why and how did she and Mr. Wickham actually get together? We know they must have been thrown together in Brighton but I wanted to know the details, especially as it seemed they did not take much notice of one another in Meryton, or so I thought until I started to write the book! It is one of the surprises of Pride and Prejudice that Lydia and Mr. Wickham elope to London and of course it is a shocking revelation when we first read the book. But despite this foolhardy act, I wanted to write her side of the story. Lydia, it seemed to me had always been given a bad press and though she should not have risked her reputation or that of her sisters by running away with Mr. Wickham, I felt rather sorry for her. It is clear that Lydia adores George Wickham and she believes his feelings for her are the same as her own. But how does Lydia come to regard him so highly? I wanted to know how their relationship developed from their earliest days in Hertfordshire, to the point of their elopement, marriage and beyond. There were so many questions that puzzled me and as Jane Austen does not tell us all the answers, I felt the only way to guess at what really happened was to write a book about her follies and adventures.

Diana Birchall, herself an Austen paraliterature author, wrote to tell us that she has had a preview of the book, and that it is “very lively and well written. . .I have read her manuscript and think a lot of it.”

We found a more descriptive blurb about Me and Mr. Darcy by Alexandra Potter, which was mentioned in yesterday’s book roundup.

U.K. author Potter makes her U.S. debut with Emily Albright, 29, a New York bookstore manager, who half-seriously blames Jane Austen’s Fitzwilliam Darcy for her abysmal dating life: Darcy sets the bar too high. As Christmas approaches, Emily, to avoid a holiday with co-worker Stella, signs up for a tour of Darcy territory, lighting out, amusingly, with a gaggle of gray-haired Darcy maniacs. As the tour group weaves in and out of Darcy locales, Emily butts heads with Spike Hargreaves, a handsome young journalist interviewing the group. Soon, the jet-lagged, drink-laden Emily finds herself—presto!—time traveling and meeting Mr. Darcy himself, complete with frock coat. As her acquaintance with Darcy deepens, Emily, to her great surprise, finds herself thinking about Spike. Despite the plot’s predictability, Potter’s chick lit take on Darcy has a refreshing not-trying-to-equal-the-master feel. (July)

This sounds EXTREMELY similar to the plot of Austenland (for which we’ll have a review this week). Extremely. Like, a lot. And, as you can probably read, it’s out in July, NOT next year as we mistakenly assumed.

ETA: Next time we’ll just check Amazon. *slaps self with Clue Trout*

“I am sure,” cried Catherine, “I did not mean to say any thing wrong; but it is a nice book, and why should not I call it so?”

Catherine is absolutely correct: books are very nice, indeed! (As is Henry Tilney!) With a veritable cornucopia of upcoming books for Janeites to enjoy, we have decided that tonight and for the next three nights, AustenBlog will have at least one post related to books by, about, or inspired by Jane Austen, culminating on Friday in a giveaway of a copy of The Jane Austen Handbook: A Sensible Yet Elegant Guide to Her World, personally inscribed to the recipient by the Authoress. (We also will have information about bookplates for the runners-up and other Handbook-related fun.) If any of our Gentle Readers would like to send in reviews of recent releases of Jane Austen-related books, we would love to publish them, so make haste!

Good news for Team Knightley: a paperback edition of Mr. Knightley’s Diary by Amanda Grange will be available in the U.S. in October from Berkley. (Click on the thumbnail to see a larger version of the gorgeous cover illustration.) Berkley also will be publishing Captain Wentworth’s Diary in paperback, though no date is available yet. However, for those who can’t wait, or are on the other side of the pond, Captain Wentworth’s Diary will be available in about a month; it is available for preorder in hardback from the publisher’s site at a very nice discount. We hear that the next book in the series will be Edmund Bertram’s Diary, which should be out sometime in 2008, and after that…rumors of a certain gentleman of the military sharing his secrets have reached our shell-pink ears. AMMMMM!

For any Gentle Readers heading to Book Expo America this week, there will be a panel on Jane Austen called “Confessions of Jane Austen Addicts: Author, publisher, and bookseller perspectives on Austen’s enduring popularity” (all the way at the bottom of the page). Panelists include Kathryn Court, president and publisher of Penguin Books; Patrice Hannon, author of 101 Things You Didn’t Know About Jane Austen: The Truth About the World’s Most Intriguing Romantic Literary Heroine and the upcoming Dear Jane Austen: A Heroine’s Guide to Life and Love; Laurie Viera Rigler, author of the upcoming Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict; and, though they are not listed on the site, we are told Emily Auerbach, author of Searching for Jane Austen; Emma Campbell Webster, author of the upcoming Lost in Austen: Create Your Own Jane Austen Adventure; and Antonia Squire, children’s book buyer at Kepler’s Books in Menlo Park, California. Also contrary to the site, we are told the panel begins at 4 p.m., not 4:30!

Attention Team Tilney (and Team Valancourt, we guess): Graphics Classics’ Gothic Classics Volume 14, featuring graphic-novel treatments of Northanger Abbey and The Mysteries of Udolpho, is available for purchase. If you want to receive the novel right away, order direct from the publisher; they tell us it should be available on Amazon in about two weeks.

Alert Janeite Julie P. told us about A Match Made on Madison by Dee Davis, which the cover blurb claims is an homage to Emma; since it’s about high-society matchmakers, the comparison is perhaps inevitable!

Alert Janeites Joan Ellen (a sequel author herself) and Kim sent us a deal from Publisher’s Lunch Weekly that might be of interest to Team Darcy.

UK bestselling author Alexandra Potter’s ME AND MR. DARCY, a contemporary novel about life, love and dating literature’s most eligible bachelor, to Signe Pike at Ballantine, for publication as a trade paperback original, by Stephanie Cabot at The Gernert Company.

Look for it sometime next year, we would say.

Speaking of Team Darcy, Diana Birchall’s novel Mrs. Darcy’s Dilemma, previously available only through online outlets, will be republished next year by Sourcebooks, publisher of Linda Berdoll’s books, Mr. Darcy’s Diary by Amanda Grange (clearly Team Darcy has a strong foothold there), and The Jane Austen Miscellany, which means that anyone who has had trouble tracking down the book will be able to purchase it in almost any bookstore. Indeed, the bookstores will be full to bursting with Jane books in the upcoming months!

(We will update the blogroll this week, we promise most faithfully!)

Alert Janeite Franka reports that one of the dresses worn by Keira Knightley in the 2005 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice is for sale at the very spendy price of £3,995 (US$6,629).

A dress worn by Elizabeth Bennet (Keira Knightley) in the wonderful 2005 adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel Pride and Prejudice. This custom made, simple, empire line brown/maroon cotton dress has hidden buttons up the front and a paler coloured piece of ribbon detailing under the ‘bust’, also there is a green satin lining dress underneath. There is no size marked but it is labelled “Sands Films”. Keira has earned an Academy Awards nomination for Best Actress in a leading role for her inspiring performance in the film. She can be seen wearing this style of dress at the very beginning of the film as we seen her make her way home after enjoying some peaceful time away from the turbulent family. This dress also features on the cover of the DVD and for the promotional posters for the film’s release.

Proof positive that Keira Knightley could be beautiful dressed in a burlap sack.

Alert Janeite Julie T. reports that last Sunday’s New York Times crossword puzzle contained the clue (at 10 Down):

Mr. _____ , scheming vicar in “Emma”

Huzzah!

(Psst…since we’re getting people searching for the clue, the answer is the first name of the singer of “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”)

Bob Mondello of NPR gets positively snarky, in a public-radio sort of way, over Becoming Jane.

Bio-pics are almost alarmingly common this summer. . .English novelist Jane Austen in Becoming Jane, a picture filled with sense and sensibility, pride and prejudice and lots of invented biographical details.

Glad to see the message is getting through.

Fellow-ette is annoyed by the trailer.

My ideal biopic would:

1-be somewhat feminist in that J.A’s life brings to light lots of interesting stuff about women’s roles
2-pay credit to J.A’s wit and powers of unobserved observation
3-not feature a pouting, dashing, dress-dragging through the woods gosh-darnit spunky heroine
4-not be a heavy-breathing inducing cliche designed to pander to J.A’s fan-club of YA/Romance writers
5-pride itself on its subtlety and merit a second viewing and
5-Be funny. The love story in Shakespeare in Love was a bit cliched and hackneyed, but what saved that movie was its full wealth of wit. It was a hilarious romp of literary in-jokes.

With particular attention to No. 5, we think.

Alert Janeite Lisa sent us an article in The Times about Andrew Davies’ appearance at the Hay Festival, in which he reveals some of his opinions on Jane Austen, as well as some plot points for his upcoming adaptation of Sense and Sensibility. Now, Mr. Davies is known for a perverse enjoyment in Winding Up the Janeites, so keep that in mind as you read.

Davies, best known for his television adaptations of Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Charles Dickens’s Bleak House, said: “Austen never really had men in her books on their own, or men without women. I don’t think she really understood them. She didn’t draw out her male characters enough.”

Maybe because the main characters of her books are women? Just an idea.

In his latest project, an adaptation of Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, he plans to remedy matters by hardening up the male characters. “I’ve had to work up the guys to make them stronger,” he said. He has written up the main character, Willoughby, as a “shit”, as he put it.

“I got fed up with that screen version where all the women swooned over him,” he said, referring to the 1996 movie directed by Ang Lee that starred Greg Wise as Willoughby.

In the film, written by Emma Thompson, Willoughby was very much a charmer, just as Wise proved to be in real life. He met Thompson on the set, they fell in love and then married.

He understands that Greg Wise is a real person and Willoughby a fictional character, right? That Greg could be a good guy and play a bad guy in the movies? But then, we soon learn that Mr. Davies apparently is a very literal sort of chap. (more…)

We sort of vaguely recall reading and snarking this article from The Daily Telegraph, but can’t find it in the archives. Frances Wilson (who writes for the Telegraph) has an article in the New Zealand Herald about why Jane Austen is not as great as we all think. How kind of her to offer to educate us ignorant masses! (more…)

Persuasions On-Line, JASNA’s online journal, has issued a call for papers for a special edition to concentrate on Global Jane Austen.

We invite essays on “Global Jane Austen” for a special edition of Persuasions On-Line. Austen, who never traveled outside England, has nonetheless wielded enormous literary and cultural influence across the globe. Austen societies can be found on at least five continents, and her novels have been the inspiration for films set in India as well as California. In addition, novelists in many languages have attempted to translate or transpose aspects of her plots, themes, and techniques into entirely different settings. What is the secret of her global appeal? What are the limits of translation across cultures?

Papers are due July 15, 2007 (see link for details) so make haste!

Some autumn dates have been added to Karen Eterovich’s one-woman-with-audience-participation play, Cheer From Chawton. The dates are: Friday, October 26, 2007, at Hanover College in Hanover, Indiana, and October 31 and November 1-2, 2007, at Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa.

We forgot to link this a while back, but JASNA has posted reviews from four Austen-related books on its Web site. JASNA members received these reviews in the latest issue of JASNA News. For those who are not JASNA members, the reviews are for Deirdre Le Faye’s (rather spendy, but we would love to own it) A Chronology of Jane Austen and Her Family, Jane Austen’s Textual Lives: From Aeschylus to Bollywood by Kathryn Sutherland, Chick Lit: The New Woman’s Fiction Edited by Suzanne Ferris and Mallory Young, and three new titles from the Juvenilia Press: Jack & Alice, Lady Susan, and The Three Sisters.

Alert Janeite Robyn wrote to tell us that there is a new Becoming Jane trailer (slightly different from the UK trailer) at Yahoo Movies.

We have two comments to make:

1. What an marvelous cast!

2. Does anyone have a spot of Pepto-Bismol they could spare us? Or perhaps some insulin?

ETA: We’re not the only ones troubled by the trailer, but we don’t deny that Jane was capable of feeling passion, or that her books don’t contain it–just that the film is not only a Made Up Story, but from the evidence of the trailer typical Hollywood schlocky Made Up Story.

Karen L. posted a comment with a Letter to the Editor of the New York Times in reference to the Joyce Carol Oates quote we posted earlier in the week:

To the Editor:

As summer reading lists beckon, surely The Times owes its younger readers better than Joyce Carol Oates’s dismissal of Jane Austen’s alleged “too many descriptions of furniture and balls and ballroom gowns.”

Austen’s fans admire her economy of description of physical objects; any first-year English student has learned that Austen uses things only when necessary for characterization.

I hope that this will encourage your readers, who lack demanding publication schedules of their own, to use the summer to actually look into a Jane Austen novel.

Kate Ward
Chicago, May 21, 2007

To which we responded when we read it: “Oh SNAP!”

Then Cub Reporter Julie B. posted a comment:

Wasn’t this meant ironically? I mean, maybe Oates is a Janeite and knows there were very few such descriptions in her novels, and was certain we’d all get the joke?

We didn’t think so, but just to be fair went back and read the full text of Ms. Oates’ comment in the original article:

I can suggest Ernest Hemingway. There’s much too much smoking, drinking, fishing and hunting in Hemingway, and it could all be cut out. If that is cut out about 70 percent of Hemingway would go.

And let’s say Jane Austen: too many descriptions of furniture and balls and ballroom gowns. I’m sure I could think of many other titles that would benefit from being cut, including some of my own.

Saying there is “much too much smoking, drinking, fishing and hunting in Hemingway” has GOT to be a joke. Hasn’t it? Because there is a lot of it, certainly, but it’s kind of the point. Suggesting cutting it is quite funny.

But then, to say in the same vein that there are “too many descriptions of furniture and balls and ballroom gowns” in Jane Austen’s work is wrong, because there are hardly any such descriptions. Whereas there are lots and lots of the to-be-cut items in Hemingway. So if there is irony in Ms. Oates’ comment, they are opposite kinds of irony, if that makes any sense. Perhaps if there IS a joke there, that is why so many of us normally-not-without-humor types missed it.

We feel it’s quite possible that Ms. Oates is making a subtle point that the premise of the article is rather stupid (which it is). Or perhaps our chapeau d’etain just needs some adjusting.

There’s an old story about how to boil a live frog: he will protest at being put into a pot of boiling water, so put him in a pot of nice cool water, and then slowly, slowly bring up the temperature. Before the poor thing knows what hit him, you’ve got one parboiled froggie.

(Disclaimer: AustenBlog.com does not condone or promote the slow torture of amphibians. It’s a metaphor, savvy?)

If you have a friend or family member to whom you have been trying to introduce the wonderful novels of Jane Austen, take the boiled frog approach, and do it a little at a time by using the dailylit.com service.

dailylit.com will e-mail a small piece of a classic novel each day; just enough to read in, say, fifteen minutes or so. For instance, Persuasion is divided into 95 sections, so each piece will be much less than a chapter. If the reader is at a good spot and eager to continue immediately, he or she may click a link in the e-mail to immediately receive the next section. With the prevalence of e-mail and Internet access on smartphones and mobile devices, anytime you’re stuck waiting somewhere, you’ll have something to read; if you are working hard at the computer and wish to take a little break, a few minutes to read an e-mail is an excellent pause that refreshes.

Suggest this method to your friends and family who want no parts of Jane Austen’s novels, and see if they are amenable to trying the novels in bite-sized chunks.

We currently are reading Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers this way. We own a copy of the novel, which sits on a shelf and mocks us. Rather than have to schlep around a humongous book or be intimidated by its length from even beginning it, we will read a little bit each day. Perfect!

There have been lots of news articles and blog posts on PBS’ “Complete Jane Austen” over the past couple of days. Even though we are less than thrilled about some of the films, we are thoroughly delighted at the attention that the event will direct at our favorite authoress. Also we find ourself mellowing out into a kind of “who-cares-they’re-just-TV-movies-anyway” sort of Zen state, somewhere between Accepting The Inevitable and a Paula Abdul-like stupor. (Yeah, surrrre she tripped over her dog.) Rainbows! The films are like rainbows of love and happiness! That Editrix Simon is just an old meanie!

In the meantime, we direct your attention to a post at the Nashville Public Television blog. The reporter was present at the PBS showcase in Dallas during which the event was announced and has some fun details on the reception of the announcement.

One announcement that got everyone excited (especially the ladies, but hey, real men, I’m told, read Jane Austen, according to a profile on Facebook) is that MASTERPIECE THEATER will broadcast adaptations of all of Austen’s six novels, plus a new drama based on her life. It’s the first time in television history that her books have been broadcast as a complete collection.

From the news release:

Beginning in January 2008 on PBS, MASTERPIECE THEATRE is inviting viewers to tune in on Sunday nights for “The Complete Jane Austen”: new presentations of Northanger Abbey, Persuasion, Mansfield Park, and Sense and Sensibility. The lineup will also include the acclaimed Emma starring Kate Beckinsale, and Pride and Prejudice, the Emmy award-winning miniseries that made Colin Firth a heartthrob.

(The ladies at the luncheon got a little crazy when that last bit of info was announced )

Hee.

And the first of an inevitable parade of misinformation and spin, The Los Angeles Times article on the event contained the following tidbit:

All four of the new Austen adaptations are by Andrew Davies, who did the earlier two screenplays too.

*headdesk*

Alert Janeite Lisa sent along a bit of video from the Jane Austen Ball held in Rochester, New York back in March. What a charming amusement for young people!