Yes, she is!

Alert Janeite Lisa let us know about an article in The Times about women comic writers, including Jane Austen.

It was when I entered the sixth form that I learnt that women could be funny too. The lovely, sexy Mr Vanwyck introduced us to Jane Austen, and reassured us that, even though it was Great Literature, we were still allowed to laugh. The boys had all gone off by then to do physics or woodwork or something – good luck to them. We didn’t want them getting in the way of our dalliance with Mr Vanwyck.

Still, it took a while to dawn on me that Jane Austen was actually quite a lot funnier than Billy Fleming. And it took Colin Firth in wet riding breeches to convince me that Mr Darcy was even sexier than Mr Vanwyck.

[. . .]

I think the real change, pace Christopher Hitchens, is that men themselves are changing, in ways that are allowing women more space to be funny. It’s not that women have changed; as Jane Austen shows, they’ve always been funny.

Is it a coincidence that the new wave of women comedians started to hit our screens round about the same time that cooking and woodwork merged into “technology”, taken by both boys and girls at school, and personal and social education took over from the biology lab as the source for information about sex?

But while women comedians are happily frisking off into fields that were traditionally the preserve of men, there is another area of comedy where women have long held sway – since the days of Jane Austen, in fact.

Of the six finalists for the new Melissa Nathan Award for comedy romance, five are women. So maybe women do have a different outlook on life. We like a happy ending.

Now we wish someone would inform the well-intentioned sorts who are reviewing our book that Jane Austen is funny…*cough*

Not much there yet except the trailer.

(Obviously we’re not done flogging the LOLcatz thing. Thanks to Heather L. for evil inspiration.)

Jane Austen’s World points us to a podcast at ABC Australia in which Penny Gay talks about Mr. Darcy. Hilariously, she confuses Matthew Macfadyen with Matthew McConaughey, but looking at the picture in the post below we can sort of see why!

Jane Austen’s World, incidentally, has links to several podcasts and other audio files of interest in its menu (and many other items of interest as well).

The New York Times compares Rupert Murdoch’s attempts to purchase The Wall Street Journal to Mr. Darcy’s courtship of Elizabeth Bennet.

But the specter of it — all forced smiles and cleared throats, the discovery of common values whether there are any or not — brings to mind a 19th-century comedy of manners that would be funny, except it is not.

The family’s first reaction to Mr. Murdoch’s $5 billion offer was all pursed lips and tut-tuts. Unthinkable, really, for such a man to be offered custody of the family’s most precious asset. He is, after all, a bit of a brute, a man of enormous capital, but very sketchy provenance.

“The last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed upon to marry,” Elizabeth called the well-situated Mr. Darcy in “Pride and Prejudice.” But Mr. Darcy wore her down, erasing her doubts and easing her suspicions by gradually revealing his character and suggesting that the stories she had heard about him were just that.

Reuters’ report of the incident includes perhaps the least sexy photo of Matthew Macfadyen we’ve ever seen.

Alert Janeite Sylvia sent us this not so much unattractive as simply inexplicable cover for a Pride and Prejudice study guide.

Is the cover perhaps supposed to show the student pulling an all-nighter?

Or a teacher after exhausting herself attempting to pound Austen into the head of surly uncooperative teenagers? (Unlike those who read AustenBlog, bien sur.)

Serena Dyer wrote to tell us that she has redesigned her costume site, Pemberley Designs. The site has information about Georgian and Regency period costume, including underwear and hairstyles, and project diaries for several gowns that Serena has made and worn to various Austen, Regency, and Georgian-themed events. One of the outfits is a reproduction of the gown Jane Austen is wearing in a watercolor by her sister Cassandra.

Serena is planning to start a quarterly newsletter in the autumn focusing on fashion in Jane Austen’s life and novels, so keep an eye on the site.

Alert Janeite Lisa let us know that yesterday’s “Word Nerd” word of the day was quiz.

Although the origin of “quiz” is unknown and probably not discoverable at this point, it has an interesting history and has had a wide range of applications. For instance, in the past it has signified something peculiar or someone whose appearance or behavior has marked him or her as eccentric in character or appearance. In her satirical novel “Northanger Abbey,” begun in 1798 but not published until 1818, Jane Austen characterized an unusual hat as a “quiz of a hat.” This sense seems to have been generally current at the time, for a “quiz” then could also signify a practical joke or a witticism. This usage seems close to the sense in which Austen used the word. Also during that period some children’s toys were known as “quizzes.”