If the ITV Jane Austen Season is so last March, so six months away, or not on the schedule, take heart: a stage play may be coming to your neighborhood this summer or fall! The On Stage and On Stage Soon sidebar categories will keep the Alert Janeite up to date with what’s happening where.

A Northanger Abbey stage play, written and directed by Tim Luscombe, will run 6-29 September at the Salisbury Playhouse in Wiltshire, Catherine Morland’s own neighborhood. See Solitary Elegance (my web site) for a summary of the play and reviews of the 2004 production at the York Theatre Royal. A complete cast list will be posted there when available; for the present Gregory Finnegan has been cast as Henry Tilney.

The box office is open at the Salisbury Playhouse’s web site, which lists several special performance days and promises more details to come about a UK tour. (Any chance for a tour across the pond? Never hurts to beg ask.)

Cub Reporter Heather L. found this on eBay and sent it to us a while back. This looks more like it should be the cover of Return to Northanger Abbey: The 25th Anniversary Reunion Special.

(C’mon, surely someone can snark better than that rather lame attempt.)

Gentle Readers, tonight we seek your opinion. We realized that our local circulating library has one (35-year-old) biography of Jane Austen and one (even older) book of criticism–and not a single copy of Northanger Abbey! We hope to correct the latter situation and perhaps donate one or two biographies and/or books of criticism, but we cannot decide which. Our favorite biography, by Elizabeth Jenkins, is out of print; and our second-favorite, Deirdre Le Faye’s Family Record, is packed full of facts but not for the neophyte Janeite. Thus, we turn to our Gentle Readers. What is your favorite Austen biography, keeping in mind this might be the first and only biography that the good citizens of our home town might ever read? We can think of a reason not to donate just about every biography we can think of, so tell us why you like it; sell it! Pimp it! Convince us!

We currently are leaning toward donating a copy of Irene Collins’ Jane Austen: The Parson’s Daughter when it comes out in paperback next month. It is a favorite, though it only covers the first part of Jane’s life. Librarians, what is your opinion vis-a-vis paperback and hardcopy in the stacks?