The break is over, and the Complete Jane Austen is back with a broadcast of Emma starring Kate Beckinsale, first broadcast on A&E about ten years ago. How interesting to ponder the later careers of some of the actresses involved: Kate Beckinsale, Samantha Morton, and Olivia Williams. We also get a big kick out of Raymond Coulthard’s take on Frank Churchill in this one (as seen to the left). He’s handsome and charming, just as he ought, and yet you believe he can be feckless. We often think that we would like to combine this version with the Gwyneth Paltrow version to make a very tolerable film version; though don’t make us pick a Miss Bates. We imagine most of our Gentle Readers have seen this one by now, but we’re sure you would like to discuss it anyway.

PBS’ Remotely Connected blog has two reviews of the film: the first is by Jessica Emerson, a/k/a JaneFan of Austen-tatious.

Self-knowledge is highly regarded by Austen, so a character who is ignorant of his or her own faults is clearly in need of correction before he or she can marry a worthy partner. On this path, Emma (Kate Beckinsale) walks a very fine line. If she were fully aware of her faults at the outset of the novel (therefore acting with willful disregard towards others) she would be a horrible person, and a hateful character. It is her naivete, her self-ignorance, her “clueless”-ness, if you will, that saves her from our scorn. We certainly do not admire her, and may even pity her.

Erica S. Perl is not a fan of period films, but was won over.

And then, something happened. I’m not exactly sure when, but my hackles came down. It might have been when the egotistical, self-satisfied Emma and the absurdly-rich-yet-unpretentious Mr. Knightly swapped their first flirty smile, or it could have been when the gullible Harriet Smith (Samantha Morton) appeared like a vision to the trolling-for-a-DIY-project Emma. All of a sudden, the characters seemed complex, edgy and flawed. In a word: modern. Not in their dress, or manner of speech, of course. But their emotional frankness and sly sense of humor took me by surprise. And hooked me.

So, Gentle Readers: how YOU doin’?

Laurie Viera Rigler has resumed her series of blog posts on Jane Austen’s novels with Emma.

These “a-ha” experiences are high on the list of reasons why I love Austen. I have this theory that if you read her works enough times and really contemplate the life lessons therein, you can pretty much give up your psychotherapist. You can even reduce your library of self-help books to Austen’s six novels. They are so much fun to read, so satisfying, so full of dramatic tension and hilarious commentary, that you hardly know you’re getting a life lesson at all. Which is exactly how I like my life lessons delivered.

We agree that much of the genius of Jane Austen (and her continuing popularity) lies in the truth of her novels. John Murray wrote to Walter Scott about Emma, “It wants incident and romance, does it not?” Silly, silly man!

Alert Janeite Sarah sent us a link to a very amusing article in the New Yorker about the recent trend of memoirs that turn out to be mostly invention (and invention is what delights us in novels, after all).

And when history books are wrong they can be miserably, badly, ridiculously wrong, a point that wasn’t lost on Jane Austen, who, in 1791, when she was sixteen, wrote a brilliant parody of Oliver Goldsmith’s four-volume, march-of-the-monarchs “History of England, from the Earliest Times to the Death of George II.” (Goldsmith, the author of the novel “The Vicar of Wakefield,” wrote history to keep out of debtors’ prison.) Austen called her parody “The History of England from the Reign of Henry the 4th to the Death of Charles the 1st, by a Partial, Prejudiced & Ignorant Historian.” It consisted of thirteen perfectly dunderheaded character sketches of crowned heads of England. Of Henry V, she wrote, “During his reign, Lord Cobham was burnt alive, but I forget what for.” Of the Duke of Somerset: “He was beheaded, of which he might with reason have been proud, had he known that such was the death of Mary Queen of Scotland; but as it was impossible that he should be conscious of what had never happened, it does not appear that he felt particularly delighted with the manner of it.” Of the allegation that Lady Jane Grey, Edward VI’s cousin, read Greek: “Whether she really understood that language or whether such a study proceeded only from an excess of vanity for which I believe she was always rather remarkable, is uncertain.” Once in a great while, Austen happened to bump into a fact or two, for which she apologized: “Truth being I think very excusable in an Historian.”

In other book news, Alert Janeites Laurel Ann and Lisa sent us a couple of links to an article about Penguin’s new endeavor with ebooks, which will be “enhanced” with “a filmography, period book reviews, recipes and black-and-white illustrations.” We were concerned about formatting, but the Publishers Weekly article claims the enhanced ebooks will be compatible with all readers. It’s a pretty good idea, as there are so many nicely formatted ebooks of public domain texts available in every format that publishers will have to offer extra content to get readers to pay money for them. Jimmy Guterman of O’Reilly disagrees.

Although ebooks should have extras, those extras should take advantage of the interactive medium, not merely deliver more — and inferior — text.

Inferior? Jane Austen? Harrrumph. Or does he mean etexts are inferior to paper? Trust us, as a dedicated ebook user, once you start reading and get lost in the story, the medium in which the story is delivered becomes completely transparent. And besides, “interactive medium” indicates a connection to the Internet, which all ebook readers (meaning the electronic devices) do NOT have, and which many ebook readers (meaning people reading books) don’t want.

What’s most galling, of course, is that Penguin isn’t attempting to increase interest in ebooks as a medium by making these classics, long past copyright, available in free, un-DRM-encumbered formats. In an old-meets-new mashup, publishers could use free distribution of still-in-demand classics to generate interest in a form, ebooks, that is still only in the earliest days of its potential public acceptance. Wouldn’t you be more likely to try something new if it was free?

As we already pointed out, there are already tons of free ebooks of public domain texts available everywhere in every format. The publishers have to do something different to get people to buy them. We would like to see some scholarly notes and essays along with the more fun stuff, by the bye; there’s plenty of room for all.

In other news, two recent entries in Norm Geras’ Writer’s Choice blog series on Normblog mention Jane Austen. Meg Rosoff discusses the different layers of Pride and Prejudice:

Above and beyond the love story - people who would never consider reading the book have swooned over various film and TV versions - Pride and Prejudice is actually a book about class, about fortunes on the way up and down, inherited wealth versus new wealth, good marriages and bad, gentlemen and bounders, and the emerging English middle class at the end of the 18th century.

…and Olivia Lichtenstein writes about the continuing fascination of filmmakers with Pride and Prejudice:

In the past decade alone, Pride and Prejudice has spawned a BBC costume drama, an Oscar-winning feature film, a Bollywood version (Bride and Prejudice), the books Bridget Jones’s Diary and Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, its sequel - arguably amongst the biggest of recent publishing sensations - and, of course, by extension, the two feature films they engendered. This year, a spoof Pride and Prejudice is planned, Jane Austen Handheld, a film which is to star Stephen Fry, Russell Brand and Lily Allen. I wonder whether frequent repetition diminishes the value of the original work of art, or at the least, people’s perception of it.

Naaaaaah.

And lastly, Alert Janeite Lisa pointed us to the Blogger News Network, which has a review of Pemberley Remembered, a new P&P sequel; we’ll have a review here at AustenBlog next week.

That’s it for Weekend Bookblogging, Gentle Readers, so until next week, remember: Books Are Nice!

Alert Baja Janeite sent us a link that indicates the 11th Annual Jane Austen Ball will be held on May 31, 2008, at UCLA. The link to the Jane Austen Ball is broken, but try this page, which is no less confusing and offers no more information. It is unclear if this is limited to students. If anyone finds out more, let us know.

Our friends at BrontëBlog found an individual who claims a rather different definition for “Janeite” than that usually heard around these parts.

Laura Joh Rowland’s The Secret Adventures of Charlotte Brontë gets a good review (check ours here) from Entertainment Weekly:

I’m what’s known in literary circles as a ”Jane-ite”— someone who rereads Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre at least once a year — so I was prepared to loathe The Secret Adventures of Charlotte Brontë, which transforms Brontë and her sisters Emily and Anne into 19th-century sleuths investigating the stabbing death of a young governess. But Laura Joh Rowland (Red Chrysanthemum) not only evokes Victorian-era London with a sure hand in this detective novel, she creates a believable Charlotte whose intelligence, stubbornness, and wit recall Jane at every turn. Even more important, the mystery itself is particularly fine.

While we don’t mean to bogart the Jane, has anyone else ever heard that definition?

Thanks to Alert Janeite Amy for the link!

Exhibit A: Sent by Alert Janeite Karen 2L, from the New York Times, March 7, 2008, referring to the author who was outed as having written a Made Up Memoir:

To the Editor:

It’s clear that Margaret Seltzer, author of “Love and Consequences,” is a gifted writer with a soaring imagination. It seems perverse, then, that she chooses to deny her destiny as a novelist.

Ms. Seltzer’s insistence that only nonfiction can “make people understand the conditions that people live in” is way off the mark.

Has she never read Charles Dickens — or even Jane Austen?

Anne Bernays
Cambridge, Mass., March 4, 2008

Exhibit B: Sent by Alert Janeites Laurel Ann and Lisa, an article about, of all things, gravel:

The sound of tires on gravel always brings to mind English manor houses on “Masterpiece Theater.” You expect a Rolls Royce to deliver over-dressed nobility into the hands of waiting domestic staff. And in Jane Austen novels, young ladies in their elaborate Victorian dress stroll along gravel lined flowerbeds.

Exhibit C: It was, perhaps, inevitable that Jane Austen would show up in reference to the hotly contested Democratic primary of the U.S. presidential race; and perhaps even more inevitable that she would show up for just about every camp.

For Barack Obama, in Slate, sent by Alert Janeite Anna:

If we were to contrast Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama we’d have to say that Clinton is one of those forgotten novelists, with an edge of rage warring in her with a penchant for excessive deference to the “divisive” politics of the past, and Obama is Jane Austen, speaking as Woolf said she did, with “freedom and fullness of expression.”

Not for Obama, from FrontPage Magazine, sent by Alert Janeite Lisa:

What in the world would a Jane Austen novel have to do with Barack Obama?

Austen’s last book which she wrote before dying is titled “Persuasion,” and in the introduction to the novel, Gillian Beers, Professor of English at the University of Cambridge, delves into the meaning of “persuasion.” According to the definitions and exploration of the word, one can’t help but think about Barack Obama. Indeed, for Barack Obama is undoubtedly a master of the art of persuasion.

For Hillary Clinton (sort of), in Newsweek, sent by Alert Janeite Deborah:

There may be a million reasons not to vote for Hillary, but the quality of her marriage is not one of them. As Charlotte Lucas says in “Pride and Prejudice,” after she makes a chillingly pragmatic union, “Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance.” She might also have said that one woman’s frog is another one’s prince—or that the glossy illusion of perfection does not insulate any marriage against inevitable struggle. She might have added that the only people who know the truth about a marriage are the two people who are in it—but she didn’t. Hillary said that.

We present the last bit in the interest of our theme of “She’s Everywhere,” and hope that it will not spawn unpleasant debate, though we have no doubt that many of our Gentle Readers hold very strong opinions on the subject.