Indiantelevision.com reports that Granada is shopping Lost In Austen to foreign markets at a television trade event this month.

Another new show is Lost In Austen. In the show a thoroughly modern heroine threatens to ruin one of the world’s greatest literary love stories in this reinvention of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Hollywood actress Alex Kingston stars alongside Hugh Bonneville, Lindsay Duncan (Rome) and new Bond girl Gemma Arterton. Bored bank worker Amanda Price (Jemima Roper) literally becomes lost in her favourite Austen book, after she finds a strange portal in her bathroom and swaps places with its heroine Elizabeth Bennet.

As she gets to know the Bennet family and encounters the famous Mr Darcy (Elliot Cowan – The Golden Compass), how can she keep this celebrated romance on track?

Raise pikes and prepare to be boarded! It’s getting out!!!

Incidentally, wasn’t this supposed to be broadcast on ITV this month? We couldn’t find anything on the ITV website. Here is a page about the series.

ETA: Alert Janeite Amo posted a link to the Region 2 DVDs in comments; release date is May 12, so presumably the series will be over by then. ETA: Release date has been changed to October 6…don’t be looking for it anytime soon.

Jane Austen Fan Trips is offering a Pride and Prejudice Tour in September 2008. The 9-day, 8-night tour will include stops in Chawton and Winchester and estates in the surrounding area with which Jane Austen was familiar, as well as visits to several estates associated with various films based on her novels. The tour also includes several days in Bath, including a workshop, walking tour, and a Regency Ball. Check out the link for all the details.

We have received some more details about the Jane Austen Festival that will take place in Canberra, Australia, from 16-20 April, 2008. There are not just social gatherings planned, but a reticule make-and-take workshop, dance lessons, a fashion show, and not one but two balls! Check out the link for all the details, and if you go, we would love to publish your report.

ETA: The festival is in APRIL, not June. We apologize for the error.

The University of the Pacific’s Center for Professional and Continuing Education will give a weekend course on “Jane Austen on the Big Screen” this weekend, 9-5:30 on Saturday and Sunday. Recordnet has an article about the course with details and contact information.

Austen’s elegant prose, rooted in late 18th century and early 19th century England, has transcended time. She died at 41 in 1817, but her books never have been out of print.

The reason is as simple, direct and alluring as thestories and characters in Austen’s seven books.

“She really stuck to core issues between people,” said Smith, 44, who has taught her two-day film course five times at Pacific and led Austen reading groups in Stockton and Latin America. “Not just love, but also how sisters get along with each other. She focuses on relationships. People recognize those dynamics.”

Again, if you take the course we’d love to hear about it.

The Cleveland Free Times has a review of the current production of Pride and Prejudice at the Cleveland Play House, complete with opening-line pastiche.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single book in possession of a wide readership must be in want of a large-scale stage production. True-blue Austenites may long for the ironic intimacy of the real Jane. But those who are less acquainted with the five Bennet sisters, their impossible mother and long-suffering father will go for the broader strokes, the almost burlesque aspects of the early-19th-century marriage market.

And yet again…reader reviews are very welcome!

Alert Baja Janeite sent us a link to two video interviews at WETA’s Author Author blog. In the first video, Bethanne Patrick, the host of Author Author, interviews Michael Dirda, the book critic of the Washington Post, discussing Miss Austen Regrets and Jane Austen’s novels. The second video is an interview with Carol Pippen, a professor at Goucher College and the editor of JASNA News, talking about Pride and Prejudice, both the book and the 1995 miniseries. Each video is about an hour long, and we haven’t had a chance to watch them yet, but we did have an opportunity to chat over the phone with Bethanne a couple of months ago and she is delightful. (Technical difficulties have unfortunately prevented the posting of the discussion, but we remain hopeful!)

Review by MJRyan

The premise of this book sounded intriguing - a young American woman in post-World War II England discovers that the story of Pride and Prejudice was based on a real couple. With the allure of such a romantic reality she begins investigating during her infrequent leaves from her job with the Army Exchange Service. What unfurls is so detailed a fictional history of fictional characters that it left this reader quite uninterested.

But this doesn’t even touch on my biggest issue with the book. By implying that Austen cribbed each and every character from real people, the author minimizes Austen’s genius at creating compelling characters from her imagination. I have no doubt that Austen’s characters were amalgams of people she knew in the course of her life; “write what you know” is a tenet for a reason. But, to write so blatantly of people she knew in real life would have not only cause offense but could have also exposed her as the anonymous authoress. (more…)

As several of our Gentle Readers have expressed Concern over the workings of AustenBlog and the behavior of other visitors of late, we thought it might be a good idea to have an objective third party to mediate. Therefore, please welcome our new ombudsman, DCI Gene Hunt of the Criminal Investigation Department to the AustenBlog staff. (We won’t be reviewing any of his books, though; sorry.) You can call him Guv.

For those distraught and concerned by recent events on the blog, the Guv has a message:

We hope this new appointment improves your AustenBlog reading experience. Trust the Gene Genie.