Ontario public educational media organization TVO, which is airing the three new adaptations of Northanger Abbey, Mansfield Park, and Persuasion beginning on December 16, has put together a Jane Austen site that includes exclusive videos discussing aspects of the novels, with clips from the three films, some biographical information, photo galleries, and more information. Check it out!

Alert Janeite Sibylle let us know that Worth Press will publish attractive new “Winchester Editions” of Jane Austen’s novels that include 12-page introductions and information about “characters, locations and times of Jane Austen” and featuring color reproductions of Hugh Thomson’s illustrations. A PDF download claims the books are available now, though Sibylle said they will be published in February 2008. Here’s Northanger Abbey–links at the bottom of the page include the other novels.

The Camden County College English Department will hold a five-part series of lectures on Jane Austen’s work from February 28, 2008 through April 3, 2008 at the Blackwood Campus.

“All About Austen: Her Laughter, Her Life, Her Legacy” features five scholars who will explore the novelist’s work from literary and historical perspectives.

The lecture series celebrates Women’s History Month between Feb. 28 to April 3. The Thursday evening series takes place at 7 p.m. in Madison Hall 210 on the Blackwood Campus.

- Feb. 28: Elizabeth Steele, president of the Northeastern Jane Austen Society, will address “Becoming Janeites - The Society of Austen.”

- March 6: William Galperin, professor of English at Rutgers-New Brunswick, discusses Austen’s most controversial novel, “Mansfield Park.”

- March 13: Dr. Paula Marantz-Cohen, professor of English at Drexel University, will share her thoughts on writing, reading and loving Jane Austen.

- March 20: Dr. Colleen Sheehan, professor of History at Villanova University, will discuss how Austen’s novels combine wit and wisdom.

- April 3: Lisa Zeidner, professor of Creative Writing at Rutgers-Camden, will screen segments of contemporary Austen films and lecture on their adaptation from novel to film.

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review has a combination Jane’s-hot and a preview of the stage production of Pride and Prejudice at the Pittsburgh Irish & Classical Theatre, opening this week. It sounds like the cast is a real nest o’Janeites and having a great time with it!

Appearing opposite him as the strong-headed, plain-spoken Elizabeth Bennett is Leah M. Curney.

For Curney, it’s an opportunity to play a character from a book she has loved since a friend lent it to her in high school. It’s also one that for Curney has withstood the test of time.

[. . .]

The very modern misses who appear as Elizabeth Bennett’s sisters also find much to like in Austen’s 1813 novel.

Whenever Alana Rader, who plays Kitty Bennett, has a bad day, she retreats to the Regency by popping in a tape of “Pride and Prejudice” or “Sense and Sensibility.”

“It’s Jane Austen therapy,” says Rader. “These could easily be modern-day heroines.”

For Laura Lee Brautigam, who plays Lydia, watching the mini-series of “Pride and Prejudice” was a regular part of her high-school social life.

“We would have ‘Pride and Prejudice’ parties,” she says. “We would get into comfy clothes, watch one tape, eat, watch another tape, have girl time, laugh and eat.”

Erica Highberg, who plays Jane, admits it had been a long time since she had read any of Austen’s novels. But, now that she’s in rehearsal, she has gotten reacquainted with the author and her characters.

“I love her humor. She’s so funny,” says Highberg. “It’s more fun now as I imagine the cast of characters.”

The article also has gift suggestions for the Janeites in your life. Thanks to Alert Janeite Lisa for the link!

Alert Janeite Carmen of JAcastellano let us know that the DVD of MP07 is available in Spain (Region 2). Looks like there’s a Spanish dubbed track, and Spanish subtitles as well.

ETA: Slightly different cover here…we like that one better.

Alert Janeite Kimberly let us know that actor and director Anton Rodgers, husband of Janeite favorite Elizabeth Garvie (and co-star of her traveling Jane Austen show) has died at the age of 74. AustenBlog extends our condolences to Ms. Garvie and her family.

Miss Austen Regrets makes two Jane Austen-related films for Olivia Williams, and she tells the Telegraph that she feels a responsibility towards the work, as she’s a big Jane Austen fan. We’ve heard that before, but we find Ms. Williams rather more convincing.

Miss Austen Regrets is a highly - maybe dangerously - speculative biopic, tracing a narrative out of the writer’s possible romantic near-misses. It is a bleakly accomplished little film, quite unlike last spring’s sprightly Becoming Jane, and Williams turns in a startling and muscular performance: spiky, self-assured and yet frequently stricken by the thought of what might have been.

‘Mmm, it’s very dangerous, isn’t it?’ Williams agrees, flinching a little. She hopes the Janeites who made such a fuss about Anne Hathaway’s Austen in Becoming Jane are still lying down in their darkened rooms, recovering, so that this film will pass without comment.

Ah ha ha ha as if.

However, she is a bit of a Janeite herself, so her own reservations surface with very little encouragement. Having trained herself to be ‘wily and flinty and mercenary’ over the years, which is presumably one reason why she signed up to the project, she couldn’t help being pained by it. She feels awkward about the intrusion into a modest and little-known life: ‘My ideal script would be quotations from the letters, brilliantly knitted together into perfectly natural scenes. Anything that you put into her mouth has to be brilliant, written by somebody who was as brilliant as Jane Austen, and that’s impossible, so to have her speaking in a way that is lazily colloquial to me was a mistake.’

So she has said lines that she feels uncomfortable with? ‘Did I say lines I was uncomfortable with?’ she muses, in a rather lawyerly fashion. ‘There was so much debate that most of the time we shot scenes two ways, so I’m subject to the editors. I feel I’ve done what I can, I’ve fulfilled my contract, and I’ve quieted my own conscience.’

We are half-twitchy and half-reassured by this. Thanks to Alert Janeite Lisa for the link!

Alert Janeite Laurel Ann sent us an article from the Guardian that suggests some, uh, alternative adaptations to Jane Austen’s novels…

Scents and Sentimentality
This one-off ITV drama deals with an episode in Jane Austen’s life when she visited a drapery shop. As Jane attempted to buy handkerchiefs and perfume, the draper (a dark fellow with an aquiline nose) adopted an unnecessarily haughty tone.

Scents and Sentimentality 2
It turns out that he was only working as a draper in the hope of meeting a modest wife before inheriting his uncle’s vast estate! But Jane never discovers this, because she doesn’t need any more handkerchiefs.

Hyde Park
In this lavish film by Working Title, Jane Austen goes for a walk in Hyde Park where a shy yet wealthy curate tries to buy her an ice cream. This true-life experience (referred to briefly by Austen in a letter to her sister Cassandra in 1803) came to a sad end when she misunderstood the stammering clergyman, took great umbrage and hurried away. Julia Roberts takes the leading role, with Rowan Atkinson as the curate.

Enema
It is known that Jane Austen suffered various physical ailments, possibly some kind of glandular problem, and took regular trips to the healing waters of Bath. What was not known (until the launch of this $80m, 24-part series from the Histor-Tainment Network of California, starring Beyonce Knowles as Jane) is that she once visited an avant-garde young doctor in search of treatment. The doctor’s proposed methods so horrified our delicate spinster that she never returned to Bath, thus never learning that the ‘doctor’ was in fact a duke who adored her from afar and could think of no other way to make her acquaintance.

Coat hanger Abbey
Universal Pictures presents a heartbreaking tale, based on a little-known event in Jane Austen’s life when she was invited to dine at an imposing residence in Oxfordshire. The novelist (played here by Will Ferrell in a fat suit) detected a tone of condescending pride from the man who helped her off with her coat, and, deeply offended at such inappropriate behaviour from a butler, called immediately for her carriage. By the time she realised that she had mistaken the abbey’s rich bachelor owner for a servant, it was too late and he had married her cousin.

Laurel Ann wrote that she liked Coat hanger Abbey the best…so do we. (Again–can’t be much worse than…you know what.)

Ms. Place posted a link to a Christmas story by Jo Beverly, “The Mistletoe Kiss,” that features Miss Jane Austen in a cameo role. We rather had to not so much suspend our disbelief as stick it with the Official AustenBlog Titanium Spork™ and hang it out the window, but we thought some of our readers might enjoy the little piece.

This article popped up on our Jane Austen Google Alert and is a real teal deer, so we didn’t read it very thoroughly, just the Jane Austen stuff. Probably shouldn’t have bothered, really.

(We’re fairly certain that the site is badly coded and the ?s should be quotation marks. High ASCII characters make mockery of us all.)

�When I teach 18th century literature, I teach 18th century literature,� she says firmly. There she becomes more concerned with post-colonial criticism. She gives Jane Austen’s �Mansfield Park� as an example. When teaching the book, she asks students to look at what Marxist literary theorist Terry Eagelton writes as most comparative literature departments around the globe do, and then asks them to consider what Edward Said says. In Said’s book Culture and Imperialism he describes the power relations of the 18th century and turns from the book’s romantic plot to its historical context. �There’s a family in a beautiful estate. There are trees, horses, hunting. The mansions with maids and cooks,� she says of Mansfield Park. �Their biggest problem is boredom.� Except for two lines where Austen mentions that the father has to go off to the Caribbean every so often to put down a slave uprising on his sugar plantation.

That’s a different edition from the ones we’ve read, which say no such thing.

�Then we find out that their money comes from Africans who were dragged kicking and screaming from ships and Jane Austen doesn’t even turn a hair.

Leaving aside the question of exactly what generates the money from the Antigua estate, to say that “Jane Austen doesn’t even turn a hair” is wrong on so many levels that we are at a loss.