Mansfield Park will be on New Zealand’s TV One today, Sunday, at 8:30 p.m. We’re not too swift on the time zones, hope we didn’t miss it! The other three films of ITV’s Jane Austen Season, including Northanger Abbey, Persuasion, and Emma, will be shown as well, but we don’t know when. Let us know what you think!

The following is a repost of our review of a previous edition of this book, which was published by a very small press. Patrice Hannon took a part-time job in an antique shop to help sell the book, and one of the people who purchased it was Kathryn Court, the president and publisher of Penguin Books. The rest, as they say, is history. –Ed.

When we reviewed Jane Austen’s Guide to Dating a while back, we remarked that reading the advice contained therein was like receiving a letter full of good advice from Aunt Jane. In Dear Jane Austen: A Heroine’s Guide to Life and Love, Patrice Hannon has gone one better and provided exactly that: a series of letters in Jane Austen’s voice, full of common sense and bracing admonitions, not just on romantic matters but embracing other aspects of life on which modern women might need advice, from financial to fashion to family relations, illustrating the advice with examples from her own novels.

In the wrong hands, such an endeavour could turn revoltingly twee, but Dr. Hannon has a sure grasp of the tone and subject matter. A college professor who has “taught Jane Austen’s novels to hundreds of students” according to her bio blurb, Dr. Hannon knows her Austen and aptly applies the novels to the situation of each applicant for advice, reinforcing each “lesson” with an aphorism (”Jane Austen says: A heroine needs good friends as much as she needs a hero”). (more…)

Alert Janeite Lisa sent us a link to an article directed at teens on how to beat summer boredom: what better way than to hang out with Jane Austen?

So, when you’re not out enjoying the sunshine or sleeping in (or working hard), you can combat boredom with some summer reading. To help you in your quest for good reading, here are some of my favorite books that I’d like to reread this summer:

[. . .]

“Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen. This book follows the lively and sassy Elizabeth Bennet as she deals with her slimy, love-struck cousin, her obnoxious younger sisters, her clueless mother, her association with a certain Mr. Darcy and her prejudices against him. There are many excellent lines to quote if you’re looking to practice your British accent. For example, “Those who do not complain are never pitied,” “Stupid men are the only ones worth knowing, after all,” and “Shelves in the closet. Happy thought indeed!”

(Erm…that last bit wasn’t from the book.)

Two new Austen-related books have hit the bookstores this week. Dear Jane Austen: A Heroine’s Guide to Life and Love by Patrice Hannon and Captain Wentworth’s Diary by Amanda Grange. We will be reposting our review of the former shortly (and opening a contest to win a copy) and posting a brand-new review of the latter next week.

Another new book that has caused some controversy among Janeites is Phyllis Ferguson Bottomer’s So Odd A Mixture: Along the Autistic Spectrum in Pride and Prejudice, which uses various characters in P&P to illustrate different forms and degrees of autism. Ellen Moody blogged about the book and made what we thought an excellent point about looking to modern science to explain the behavior of fictional characters.

The use of the term is an imposition and a confusing one. Where does it come from? For a start, Bottomer is a speech pathologist: the very term shows how she has been trained to regard language—as signs of illness. It may be a case of to a person with a hammer (and theories about that hammer which make it all important) many things look like a nail—or it may be that she genuinely analyses aspects of Austen’s characters which many in our society are taught to be (and are by training and disposition) uncomfortable with.

More broadly, sickness is in the eye of the beholder, and that which we label sickness is something that deviates from the norm.

Thanks to Alert Janeite Tony A. for the link.

Alert Janeite Tony A. sent us a link to a literary contest going on right now at The Book Mine Set: Jane Austen vs. Edgar Allen Poe!

The voting is open until Tuesday, July 3, so as we say in the City of Brotherly Love, vote early and often!

Our Gentle Readers will recall that we posted a request from Caroline for assistance in defraying the cost of obtaining a copy of this 1960s Dutch television adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. Caroline was able to see the film at the national television archives, and the following is her review of the film. –Ed.

I watched De Vier Dochters Bennet, a Dutch adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, at the national tv archives the other day. As the title (The Four Daughters Bennet) suggests, Kitty has been cut, but Mary takes over some of her functions, such as coughing. Georgiana is also (physically) absent, but that didn’t affect the story much. The six-part mini-series is based on Cedric Wallis’s screenplay used for the 1952 and 1958 British productions, but the credits claim it was adapted rather than translated, so there might be some changes. It was undoubtedly set in England though, as the characters asserted from time to time. Apart from the language, the only Dutch element I noticed was a poffertjespan at the Lambton Inn.

The framework was nicely done in my opinion, each episode starting with one of the Bennet girls’ diaries. There was no letter: instead Darcy explained himself to Lizzy right after the proposal, and it made a very interesting scene. Another extra bit I appreciated was the bartering scene between Darcy and Wickham. The actor did an excellent job there portraying a calculating bastard! Overall the script was decent and pretty faithful to the book, with some quaint inventions like a running gag about the size of Mr Collins’s French beans. I thought it did have a decidedly feminist streak, with Lizzy complaining about how women can do nothing but sit around waiting for a husband, etc. Some of lines were quite literal translations and they sounded a bit stilted and archaic at times. But well, it’s from 1961. The only thing I really disliked about the script was the P&P0-like twist on Lady Catherine at the end. *rolls eyes* According to Darcy she thought Lizzy was an obnoxious ill-bred little hussy, but she nonetheless was looking forward to crossing swords with her for the rest of her life. As If. (more…)

Alert Janeite Philo sent along a link to Kendra’s photos of the P07 costume display at the Jane Austen Centre in Bath. There also are some awesome photos of real period gowns from the Museum of Costume and the Victoria and Albert Museum. Check them out!

Too lazy/exhausted to post. Consider this an open thread. What’s new in the world of Jane Austen fans?

Rebecca Traister at Salon.com takes a wry look at the recent explosion of Jane Austen in popular culture. As she points out, many of the books (one might even say, including the Editrix’s own humble production) seem to be directed to Janeites who want to escape the modern world and live in a fantasy version of Jane Austen’s world, where we get to wear pretty gowns, dance with handsome men, live in a mansion, and have servants do all the work.

(To read the article, if you’re not a Salon member, just watch the little ad and then click “Enter Salon” and you will be able to read it.)

“It’s all about the dresses,” laughed Rachel Brownstein, professor of English at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center at CUNY, when I asked her about the current bout of Jane-itis. She was only half joking. “Everybody really wants to be Jane,” she elaborated, meaning that they all want “to wear long ball gowns and go to dances and be genteel,” not that they want to live in constant financial jeopardy and die single in their early 40s.

That’s a problem; many of us do tend forget the bad parts.

“We can lay a lot of this at Colin Firth’s door, for good and for bad,” said Margaret C. Sullivan by phone.

Hey now! Don’t worry, we weren’t picking on His Firthness.

“He’s pretty hot, let’s face it,” she continued

Because, you know, he is. (more…)

Alert Janeites Lisa and Tony A. sent us a link to a column from Chauncey Mabe at the Sun-Sentinel, who is despairing of the recent spate of Austen-themed books.

The conceit here — that’s lit-talk for “gimmick” — is that Hannon styles herself such an expert on all things Jane that she can, at will, speak in the voice of the author of Pride and Prejudice. She deploys this party trick to turn one of the greatest authors in the English language into an advice columnist, by way of answering questions posed by modern female readers (questions which, presumably, Hannon also composes).

In other words, Jane Austen as a time-traveling Miss Manners. What induces Plume, Hannon’s publisher, to consider the resultant work — tract? construct? bagatelle? — a novel is not readily apparent. One would have to read the text to find out, which labor I have no intention of doing. It is possible — remote, but … just … barely … uhnh! … possible — that Hannon has produced a wise and witty book that does actually capture the spirit of St. Jane. But I surely doubt it.

Possible, and indeed probable. We confess to a bit of trepidation when we received our copy of that book, many months ago, but were charmed in spite of our tar-hearted spinster self, and quite impressed by Ms. Hannon’s knowledge of Jane Austen’s work. While we have some sympathy for Mr. Mabe’s position, we think he chose the wrong object for his ire. We’ll be posting a little more about Dear Jane Austen in Friday Bookblogging (and giving a copy away as well).

We heard from Dianne Speakman of the Jane Austen Society of Australia, with some of the details of their 2007 Annual Conference, Jane Austen at the Movies, to take place at the Northside Convention Centre in Sydney on Saturday, 1 September, 2007.

Speakers will include Elizabeth Garvie, who played Elizabeth Bennet in the 1980 BBC television production of Pride and Prejudice; Jon Spence, author of Becoming Jane Austen; Gina and Andrew Macdonald, authors of Jane Austen on Screen; a Critics Panel, moderated by arts personality and reviewer Andrea Stretton and including panelists such as social anthropologist and author David Dale and award-winning novelist Susanne Gervay.

The booking form can be downloaded from the JASA Web site. We hope one of the attendees sends AustenBlog a report!

Alert Janeite Lisa sent us a link to an article in an English-language Turkish online newspaper in which the author wonders: could Jane Austen be a Turk?

Bea writes about subjects related to Turkey of interest to foreigners, and she uses as her blog strap-line a quote from the great Jane: “One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.”

I wonder, could Jane Austen have been an expat here in Turkey? Someone who could write such an apt phrase must have understood what it is like to be a foreigner in a different land.

Of course, the thing that makes Jane Austen so popular is that, although her books are set in early 19th century middle-class England, the themes she deals with are universal. “Pride and Prejudice” is the number-one best-selling classic in my bookstore. Every female reader aspires to be intelligent, witty, attractive Lizzy Bennet who finally gets her man, and the book appeals to sensitive male types, too.

As we keep saying, one of the reasons we’re all still reading Jane Austen’s work 200 years later is that it is a marvelous picture of human nature; people don’t change over the years, or across borders.

Collectible Profiles is now offering Jane Austen’s pound cake recipe (well, probably not HERS, but you know what they mean) and a little fictional diary of Jane Austen. Of the pound cake recipe, they write:

A modern version of a vintage Victorian cake recipe— it is beautifully printed on a 4” x 5 ½” Havilland blue card accented with Jane Austen’s silhouette. Enjoy a modern version of Jane Austen’s favorite sweet, a dense and delicious cake like none you have eaten–unexpected morsels of delight activated by a mystery ingredient!

Oooh!

The diary seems sweet:

Ease back into your favorite chair and slip into an eventful time as you read her entries reflecting on who she is as a woman and author. Enjoy her critical observations of historical figures and world events–the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars as they impact her family. Austen Times includes her thoughts as she travels from Bath to London to visit her publisher about Pride and Prejudice, and Sense and Sensibility.

(Parenthetically, we now have a Van Halen song stuck in our head. *revs power drill*)

Cinematical also noticed the release of the Becoming Jane poster, and had some comments on the subject matter of the film as well.

Here’s hoping the film is somewhat restrained in using Austen’s life as a jumping off point for a bodice-ripping romance that certainly never happened. After all, we’re talking about a family-supervised, above-board acquaintanceship that happened between two society young people in the late 18th century. How much heat could you possible get out of that?

Oh, you’d be surprised what they can do in the movies these days!

Thanks to Alert Janeite ltk for the link.

(as Bridget Jones would say.)

Alert Janeite Lisa sent us a link in The Times about Colin Firth, in which he talks a little bit about probably his best-known role, which is kind of interesting because the article is in the automotive section. (She is indeed Everywhere.)

“I was working at edgy, serious stuff for years,” he says, “but a lot of it wasn’t seen. I remember doing Master of the Moor, playing a character who chopped people’s heads off.

“Yet it is things like Bridget Jones which stick to your skin, and I stepped on a timebomb with Mr Darcy in Pride and Prejudice.”

It was a life-changing experience for Firth, bringing instant fame and an adoring female fan base. Yet he was advised not to take on the role of the brooding Darcy. “I could not have been more wrong for it,” he says. “I am totally unlike Mr Darcy. I talk like a blue streak, I don’t own a horse or acres of property. I’m a secondary-modern schoolkid with no links to nobility. Yet I played this taciturn, dark, sexy guy and everyone remembers it.”

Dorothy? Pray send Mr. Firth the Understatement of the Millennium Award directly.

As Alert Janeite Lisa wrote when she sent us the link, Jane is “in the middle, next to Barak Obama, below Saddam Hussein Osama bin Laden and kitty corner from Jesus.” Front and center, Gentle Readers! Represent!

Unfortunately it’s another save-Jane-from-the-Janeites article.

It might seem all to the good that Austen is now one of those writers held up as a model by such nostalgics as Tom Wolfe: a novelist for everyone, dishing up literary intricacy and complexity for the scholars, a corking good read for the groundlings and a rebuke for the snobs. But it’s time to rescue Austen from her fans, lest the most adventurous and discerning readers pass her by. If you look at her books closely, you find them more bleak than charming: her characters are isolated within their own minds, trapped in tight spaces, forced to socialize daily with a small group of people they can never fully trust, including their own families. Not a one of her heroines ever shares everything with a true confidant—that is, up until the marriage we never see—and everybody has secrets and conflicting agendas. Courtship is deadly serious business: fail to find the right husband and you end up poor, or married to someone you can’t stand, or cast out of this iffy Eden for fornication or adultery, perhaps to die.

As Karen Joy Fowler wrote, “Surely no one else’s fans have been scolded so often for so long over the wrong-headed ways they love her. Even Austen herself has been appropriated for this project. She would be so ashamed of you, her fans are told. You’d embarrass her.” There are many ways to love Jane…as we have witnessed on this blog just the past few days. If you want to play in your particular corner of the Janeite fandom, embrace it with good humor. It’s when it starts getting taken too seriously that the problems begin, and that usually happens when big money is involved: for instance, a major Hollywood film.

Austen balances out that bleakness with wisdom, with humor, with romance, and above all with a deeply satisfying sense of form, analyzed by scholars and subliminally sensed by general readers. Entertainment, advertising, professional sports, the gossip industry, electro-gaming and the tsunamis of digital information seem calculated to obliterate that bleakness, or at least drown it out with noise. Literature, by contrast, tries to find what Samuel Beckett called “a form to accommodate the mess”—the pain and disorder of life inside and outside the mind. If admirers of Beckett, or whatever exemplar of High Seriousness or harsh edginess or meta-coolness you want to name, pass up Austen because of the prevalent notion that she’s a literary fashion accessory who can be cozied up to as “Jane” … well, what? The sky won’t fall, the books will survive, but the culture will ratchet down another notch, and the best readers will never know what they’re missing.

Oh, stop it. If anyone passes up reading Jane Austen’s novels because she’s too popular, well, it’s their loss. There are plenty of us who can balance an enjoyment of the trappings of modern Janeiteism and a serious interest in her novels. Don’t blame the Jane Austen fans for the excesses of popular culture, which cannot let a good thing lie but must seize upon it and beat it into submission. However, some of the collateral stuff is FUN–some of the movies are good, some of the pastiches are good, we love our dolls and action figure and graphic novel and LOLAustens. That doesn’t take a thing away from the novels themselves.

Alert Janeites Marmee, Jane, and Marion sent us a link to an interview on NPR’s Weekend Edition with Shannon Hale, author of Austenland. Shannon talks a bit about how she came up with the idea of the book and why she wrote it.

Thirty-two-year-old Jane Hayes — the protagonist of a new novel — is one of those devotees. In her mind, no man can measure up to Fitzwilliam Darcy of Pride and Prejudice. And specifically, the Fitzwilliam played by Colin Firth in the BBC adaptation of the book.

In Austenland, novelist Shannon Hale tells Hayes’ coming-of-age story as her character grapples with her obsession at Pembrook Park, a British resort that caters to Austen-crazed women.

Hayes sees the trip as her final indulgence of her obsession before she gives up her fantasy world permanently. But as she delves into Pembrook’s world of proper etiquette, donning corsets and empire-waist gowns, she finds herself torn — in true Austen fashion — between the Darcy-esque Mr. Nobley and the resort’s enticing gardener.

The trick for Hayes is figuring out if the targets of her affection are sincere, or just actors in a show.

It’s a nice little interview, but what surprised us was that the author talked about readers who have contacted her and want to go to Austenland. For those who have not read the book, it’s not just about dressing up and hanging out at a country estate; “Austenland” is stocked with actors who will flirt with the women. We found that last part a bit much. Getting dressed up in Regency gowns and hanging out at a country estate sounds like a fine time, especially if some of our Janeite friends (men and women) come along. But if some actor started to flirt with us–and it’s not like these women don’t know they’re actors–we would probably demand more tea and then sit there mocking them. How degrading is that? To have to pay someone to flirt with you? Is that really what people think Janeites are all about? When we go to “Jane places,” it’s to learn more about her, and when we imagine ourselves a character in a Jane Austen novel, it is because we want to better understand the motivations and actions and emotional journey of that character. We’re not hiding the DVDs in houseplants, as the protagonist of Austenland did, because we are somehow ashamed of our obsession. We’re here, we’re Janeites, get used to it!

At least, we thought so. Is it just us? (more…)

We imagine that reading the headline of this post made many of our Gentle Readers scream and cover their hands with their head, but fear not, Janeites: It’s not some crazed TV executive, but the latest book by Jasper Fforde, First Among Sequels.

In The Eyre Affair,Next confronts an arch-villain who has been killing off minor characters in Dickens, then kidnaps Jane Eyre. In Next’s fifth and latest adventure, First Among Sequels, published in early July, she investigates the premature deaths of Sherlock Holmes and Miss Marple, Pride and Prejudice is turned into a reality show called The Bennets and she meets a fictional Thursday Next – herself from a previous Fforde book.

If anyone can pull this off brilliantly, it’s Jasper Fforde, from whom we are waiting to hear in reference to our proposal of marriage. (Bally restraining order.) If you have not read his books, do yourself a favor and read them immediately. We once described them to a friend as porn for English majors.

A.D. Players will present Pride and Prejudice at the Grace Theatre in Houston, Texas, from July 6 through August 26.

A. D. Players will conclude its 40th Anniversary Season by presenting PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, an original adaptation by James Maxwell, revised by Alan Stanford, from the classic novel of love amid class warfare by Jane Austen…

Set in 19th century England, this classic love story follows the lives of five daughters, all of age and all unmarried. Jane and Elizabeth Bennet, the only two sensible sisters, challenge the snobbery of high-class society in the quest for true love.

The small English country town is turned upside-down when a rich youth from London buys a local manor house and throws a ball for the whole neighborhood. But his aristocratic friend casts a shadow on any chance of romance with a poorer heart. Can love prevail in a society of marriage for money?

Tickets (we cannot tell how much they are from the Web site) are available online or by calling the box office at 713-526-2721.

Alert Janeite Carmen wrote to tell us that Martin Phipps, whose gorgeous score for North and South is a favorite at AustenBlog World Headquarters and who also scored Persuasion 2007, will be composing the score for the upcoming BBC adaptation of Sense and Sensibility.

We have become so accustomed now to the idea of the film Becoming Jane, which used to incite us to a state of boiling righteous rage, that we have slipped into a kind of dozy state, rather like Lady Bertram after a hearty dinner.

“The film will bring attention to Jane and her work!” we are told.

“Yes, that’s certainly true,” we reply, covering a ladylike yawn with a languid white hand.

“It will appeal to Young Persons, who will then go on to read her novels!”

“Oh, yes, certainly.” We stretch surreptitiously.

“It’s not dreadful, really; perhaps a bit romantic, but nothing out of the way.”

(Pug licks our nose as we snore softly.)

We admit we were encouraged by some recent articles that indicated the Powers That Be were not trying quite so hard to sell the idea that the story of the film was true.

See what happens when one lets one’s guard down for one little minute?

Miramax has revealed the poster for the U.S. release of Becoming Jane. Check out the log line:

“Their Love Story Was Her Greatest Inspiration”

So now we’re back to “Jane Austen’s genius only needed a man to make it flower?”

We really shall retire to Bedlam.

(And is she holding a fountain pen?)

ETA: Cinema Blend thinks the poster looks awfully familiar. Many AustenBlog readers noticed the UK poster’s similarity to another film’s poster.