Now this is what we call a party! The towns of Alton and Chawton in Hampshire–Jane Austen, of course, lived in Chawton and it is the location of the Jane Austen’s House Museum–are holding a Jane Austen Regency Week from June 21 through 29, 2008.

Events include lectures, plays, a Regency Supper, a fashion show and craft market, an Open Day at Chawton House (which is not really open to the public on a regular basis), and all kinds of activities. There is a map to follow the “Jane Austen Trail” through Alton and Chawton, a walk that Jane herself made regularly. We’re sending Dorothy to plunder the sofa cushions at AustenBlog World Headquarters once again, just in case we can dig up enough for plane fare. This sounds like a great time for Janeites.

Greetings, Gentle Readers! It’s time for another review of news items and posts about Jane Austen’s work to start off your weekend.

Scotland’s National Library is opening an exhibition featuring items from the John Murray Archive related to Jane Austen.

The display, which will open next week, includes a sales book showing that the second edition of Mansfield Park sold only 36 copies.

Oh dear! But we’re sure the exhibition will be fascinating. The exhibition is open every day; Monday-Friday from 10 a.m. until 8 p.m., Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday from 2 to 5 p.m.

If you’ve ever wanted to study Jane Austen’s work at Oxford but can’t afford plane fare, here’s your chance, sort of. Oxford University will present an online course on Jane Austen’s work from September through December 2008.

Many readers enjoy Austen’s novels but cannot define the qualities that make them so special and enduring. This course will help you to analyse Austen’s style and techniques, and give you a greater knowledge of the novels’ context, which will enhance your understanding and enjoyment of reading them.

Sounds like a great course, but a bit spendy for those of us outside the EU.

Writer’s Block discusses reading Jane Austen to improve your writing.

But what Austen did, that many writers, if not most, can and could not, was to not only encapsulate the spirit of the age, but she also captured the spirit of the human condition. Underneath all the 18th Century finery lays a picture stripped bare of all the outer pretension. There are just people: sensible people, vain people, silly people, innocent people, conflicted people, horrible people…and the list goes on. The outer aspects/attributes of them all might change, but the inner drives and motivations are remarkably unchanged from age to age. Pick up any Austen story, and you’ll find the emotions you felt when you were this age, or the exact sketch of your best friend or worst enemy at that age.

So true! And we say that all the time. Fashions change, societies change, but people do not, and Jane Austen wrote about people.

And a couple of fun blog posts to round off this week’s Bookblogging. First, Xantippe posts about the Amazing Jane Austen Diet. No, not white soup and negus, but listening to audiobooks of Jane Austen’s novels while on the treadmill! What a great idea! And the Baklava Shed Coalition tells us that Jane Austen is selling off her plants. She’s selling off her plants kind of like how That Lefroy Boy is Mr. Darcy, but at least he admits he’s delivering his content with a wink!

That’s it for this week’s Friday Bookblogging. Until next time, Gentle Readers, remember: Books Are Nice!

The Australian Jane Austen Season continues this week with Northanger Abbey 07. And look! It’s lush with straining bosoms!

Eighteenth-century Bath reveals itself to be a city of simmering depravity and barely concealed lust in this rollicking adaptation of Jane Austen’s 1798 novel. Young men in taut breeches smirk and stare suggestively at the story’s innocent heroine, Catherine Morland, as she and her coquettish new friend, Isabella Thorpe, walk the streets and attend lively balls.

The spork is calling us, Gentle Readers.

Things have slowed down a bit (thankfully) but there still are plenty of references around the press to Lefroy!Darcy. (We’ve already blogged about it here and here and have not the fortitude to recap.) However, it looks like a voice of reason has emerged from the journalistic primordial soup: The Guardian’s Mark Brown.

Look at the facts. Lefroy was a penniless law student who needed to marry money in order to get on in life; Darcy was a wealthy landowner who owned Pemberley, a large estate in Derbyshire. Lefroy was a young man with ridiculously boyish looks who was all over Austen like a hyperactive puppy. All he wanted to do was dance and chatter about books. Darcy was smouldering, aloof and masculine - he looked down his superior nose at Elizabeth Bennet. Lefroy very quickly did what he was told by his family and went off to marry a rich woman, probably hurting Austen very much. For Darcy and Bennet things were much brighter.

Wouldn’t it make more sense if the headlines read: Found: The real Mr Willoughby? He was the one who visited Marianne Dashwood day after day in Sense and Sensibility, leading her on until quickly gallivanting off to London where he found a wealthy bride.

Yes, though it would be no more real than Lefroy!Darcy. But as he said, it makes more sense.

Sense and Sensibility, a period costume sewing and fashion resource site, is offering a summer class dissecting the costumes in film adaptations of Jane Austen’s novels. There will be another class offered in the autumn, but this looks like fun!

“I Love You Because,” a modern-set, gender-switched musical adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, is being presented by The Acting Studio in Lutz, Florida, at 7:30 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays through June 21. Tickets are $15. The Acting Studio website is supremely unhelpful but at least it has a phone number for more information.