An excellent column by John Mullan in the Guardian reminds us that in Jane Austen’s day, books were often read by groups, but not in quite the same way that we think of book groups today.

The modern book club echoes habits of reading in Austen’s day. Reading, especially of fiction, was often a communal experience. And so, too, in the novels themselves. If something is worth reading it is worth reading aloud to someone you like. On rainy days in Bath, Catherine Morland and Isabella Thorpe retire to “read novels together”. When the perfidious Willoughby inveigles his way into the hearts of Marianne Dashwood and her mother and sisters, the sign of their intimacy is that they read aloud together. When he abruptly leaves them, they are in the middle of enjoying Hamlet.

But remember, not everyone can be Elizabeth Bennet.

The Jane Austen Book Club, in book and film versions, believes that we can discover ourselves and our dilemmas in Austen’s novels. So every self-respecting Janeite would believe. Most of us, like those Californian narcissists, are happy to think we might be like Elizabeth Bennet. But why not Mr Collins or Lady Catherine de Bourgh or the immortally idiotic Mrs Bennet? Austen got her fools and monsters from her observations of people, too. And who ever recognises themselves as Mrs Norris? One of the first readers of Mansfield Park, Mrs Wither Bramston, did think that she was herself rather like the elegant, enervated, vacuous Lady Bertram. And this was a sign of her admiration for the novel. But perhaps readers were a little more honest with each other in Austen’s day.

Alert Janeite Lisa sent us an article in the Guardian that describes Audiobooks Online, a Netflix-like service for audiobooks (what a great idea!), including unabridged audiobooks of Jane Austen’s novels. The article also suggests giving audiobook sets as holiday gifts, including the unabridged Austen library from Naxos.

Alert Janeite Laurel Ann sent us an eBay auction link for a Jane Austen doll do-it-yourself kit.

Laurel Ann was a little distressed by the dismembered doll, but remember she’s not Jane till she’s put together and it’s a little better.

Alert Janeite Lisa sent us an article in the Liverpool Daily Post about the Pemberley Players, a group of musicians who play period music at various events in the U.K. occasionally other countries.

The dances Austen and her characters performed, at the balls that spiced up the monotony of middle-class country life, were refined versions of the dancing practiced at village festivals for centuries.

OVER the years they became, in refined society, what the young people performed when the royalty and older people had left the room – there was more movement and raciness than in the stilted Elizabethan minuets.

The Pemberley Players will be performing at the Pride and Prejudice Ball at St. George’s Hall in Liverpool on March 8, 2008.

Alert Janeite Kathleen B. sent us a paragraph from the book Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery that mentions Jane Austen:

The Spooners lived at Elmdon hall and had a second home in Bath. But suddenly their Barbara no longer skittered along to each ball and assembly, as she must do. What was the blessed point of being in Bath at all if not to display to eligible bachelors one’s marriageable daughters? And there was a giggling queue of Spooner girls just behind Barbara who needed marrying off once she’d been settled. But now she’d gone Methodist. Her parents surely feared she would end an old maid–their beautiful Barbara! It is no wonder Jane Austen set several of her novels in Bath during this time. One can almost hear Mrs. Spooner assaulting the ears of her dear husband with keening lamentations over their unprecedented tragedy: “O! Mr. Spooner! Our dear girl has gone Methodist–Methodist! And she the prettiest of the bunch! O! What shall we do now? O! Mr. Spooner. I tell you we are ruined–ruined! Call the apothecary! O!”

Jane would just have married her off to Mr. Collins.

Norman Geras and his wife Adèle went to Chawton Cottage and Winchester.

The house is now a museum, and we walked about it looking at everything in a suitably reverent way. For me the highlight of the visit was this - the table at which she wrote. The very one. I stood before it in wonder.

That’s a pilgrimage that every Janeite should try to make. We haven’t been to Winchester yet, but we will get there one day!

We were amused by the blog of Dennis St. Michel, Viscount Stokington, whom you might know in another incarnation as Dennis the Menace. Not only is it hilarious, there are parts that sound awfully familiar…

What nonsense is this, I thought with mad bravado. What fear? What shame? I am Dennis St. Michel! But even as I made plans for the appeasement of my father, the dread settled into my very marrow. Perhaps, if I told him that I intended to make an honest man of myself, to make an honest woman of Margaret, he might be lenient on the matter of Oxford. For, it is a truth universally acknowledged, that a scoundrel not in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

(That’s not the only one; we got a good hearty horse-laugh out of “Last night I dreamt I went to Menacing House again.”)

Found via The Comics Curmudgeon