As a followup to our post the other day on St. Swithin’s Church and other architectural details in Bath, a link on JASNA’s Web site led us to The Astoft Gallery of photographs of Jane Austen Country, including photos of the Church of St. Nicholas in Steventon, houses in the neighborhood that Jane would have known, the various houses in Bath where the Austens lived or lodged, and of course Chawton Cottage. Oh, to be in Jane Austen Country in the spring!

Sorry to tease, but there’s actually only one quiz in the room. Jane Austen’s World points us to an online quiz on the Regency period. The Editrix scored 8 out of 10, and Dorothy has grounded her for a week.

Review by Diana Birchall

(We received two reviews for this book on the same day: one reviewer liked it better than the other, and we found both reviews exceedingly entertaining, so we decided to present both.–Ed.)

It was with enormous foreboding that I took up this volume. I am an old-fashioned Austen sequellist from the First Wave of Austen Sequels; style is what I care about; and as more and more sequels have appeared, I’ve been less and less able to read them. Like Jane Austen, who wrote, “I have made up my mind to like no novels really, but Miss Edgeworth’s, E.’s, and my own,” I have arrived at the point where I can really like very few sequels by other people - their visions jar mine, and there are so many! Eventually even the deepest obsessive grows weary. It’s as Queen Victoria, who had eight children and God knows how many grandchildren, said: it goes on like rabbits. And the proliferation of sequels is getting very rabbit-like. Nibble nibble nibble, hop hop hop, Darcy nibbles Elizabeth’s ear and hops on her. Enough!

So here am I, grown grey in the service of Jane Austen, and another (yawn) sequel lands on my desk. It’s called Two Shall Become One: Mr. and Mrs. Fitzwilliam Darcy. Original title, that. Nicely written forward by the Authoress, who forthrightly states that she was only recently introduced to Jane Austen by the puerile Keira Knightley movie. I do not have a good feeling about this. In fact, the feeling is so bad, I almost fling book back at Editrix ungratefully. “You are ungrateful,” says Frank Churchill to Emma. Too right I am. But then, duty being the moving spring and all that, I start to read… (more…)

Review by Allison T.

OK, call me a prude, call me a persnickety pedant, call me a Dried Up Old Prune—but I can give only the weakest of recommendations to Sharon Lathan’s Two Shall Become One—Mr. and Mrs. Fitzwilliam Darcy, published in 2006 through Lulu. It’s not because Lathan doesn’t write well: she actually has a nice flow of words and a good use of color (though she should learn the difference between “lie” and “lay” and why it is that most books have A Plot). But it is a shame that she does not wield her pen for the forces of Good instead of Evil.

What’s so Evil? Well, this ardent Janeite first shuddered when she discovered (in the foreword), that Lathan had never read any JA until she’d seen the 2005 P&P (that’s the Keira one) and walked out of the movie theater transfixed. (This is always A Bad Sign.) Her novel is based on the movie conception of the characters and carries Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy through their first five months of marriage. I gave up around page 160 because all the farther we had progressed was the first month of the honeymoon, described in far too loving detail. We heard Mrs. Bennet’s pre-wedding night advice to her daughters (fake a headache) and Mrs. Gardiner’s (an earthy woman, “forthright and blunt,” she gives all the “clinical” details). (Did you know they had clinics in 1810 or whenever? I didn’t.) Then the big event itself, which goes on for pages. I didn’t keep count, but I believe that the Darcys made love about 10 times in the first 24 hours—surely trying even for the gentleman, who had kept himself a virgin for his future wife. (Huh? Really? Doesn’t seem very Regency-like.) (more…)

It’s enough to soften even the Editrix’s tarlike spinster heart. A UK Arts Council poll that asked 6,000 people to name the people who inspired them in the arts. Jane Austen placed on the list for 18-to-25-year-olds, the over-25 list, and the overall list.

On AustenBlog’s side of the pond, students at Colby College in Portland, Maine, took a “civic engagement” class on Jane Austen that included not only studying her work but the culture and history of her time and that culminated in a gala ball for 120 people. Thanks to Alert Janeite Lisa for the links!