We just finished a long-overdue updating of our sidebar items, and the press’ fascination with Jane Austen does not seem to be subsiding; the press groans with upcoming volumes, with everything from scholarly commentary to biography to paraliterature. Let’s get to it!

Recent releases include Just Jane by Nancy Moser and its companion edition of Pride and Prejudice as well as The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen by Syrie James; we will have reviews (and giveaways) of these books soon. Also look for a review of Lovers’ Perjuries; Or, The Clandestine Courtship Of Jane Fairfax and Frank Churchill: A retelling of Jane Austen’s Emma by Joan Ellen Delman, which has considerably brightened our daily commute for the past two weeks. On the nonfiction side, Lori Smith’s book A Walk with Jane Austen: A Journey into Adventure, Love, and Faith is available; read the AustenBlog review, and congratulations to Jenny, the winner of our giveaway for a copy of the book.

The upcoming books cross all areas of Austen-related interest, from nonfiction to fiction. On the nonfiction side, there are re-releases of Jill Heydt-Stevenson’s Austen’s Unbecoming Conjunctions: Subversive Laughter, Embodied History and Park Honan’s biography Jane Austen: Her Life. We’re looking forward to In the Garden With Jane Austen by Kim Wilson, author of Tea With Jane Austen. Harold Bloom’s How to Write About Jane Austen should be, um, interesting. Other nonfiction titles include Critical Companion to Jane Austen: A Literary Reference to Her Life and Work by William Baker; Hypocrisy and the Politics of Politeness: Manners and Morals from Locke to Austen by Jenny Davidson; Jane Austen (Brief Lives) by Fiona Stafford; Jane Austen (Writers and Their Works) by Andrew Haggerty; Jane Austen & Charles Darwin: Naturalists and Novelists by Peter W. Graham; Reading the Nineteenth-century Novel: Austen to Eliot by Alison Case and Harry E. Shaw; and Writer of Fancy: The Playful Piety of Jane Austen by Peter Leithart.

On the fiction side, there are several new paraliterature titles coming up, including Ball at Pemberley: A Gentle Joke, Jane Austen Style, an intriguing title, by Elizabeth Newark; Emma & Knightley: The Sequel to Jane Austen’s Emma, by Rachel Billington, which we guess is a reprinting of the book by the same author titled Perfect Happiness; a reprint of Emma Watson: Jane Austen’s Unfinished Novel Completed by the late Joan Aiken; and Mrs. Darcy’s Dilemma by Diana Birchall.

We also noticed that Signet has overhauled their low-priced paperback versions of Jane Austen’s novels with new covers and afterwords by various romance novelists; so far Amazon is listing Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion. (Why the pic of a birdcage on P&P? It seems to us more fitting for MP. I can’t get out, said the starling.)

Speaking of editions of Jane Austen’s novels, Alert Janeite Laurel Ann sent us a slightly risqué cover image from a French translation of Sense and Sensibility; link might not be safe for work.

Lastly, Emma Campbell Webster, author of Lost in Austen: Create Your Own Jane Austen Adventure, wrote an article about happy-ever-after endings for the Guardian.

Austen always gives her protagonists at least one opportunity to say no to marriage before they finally agree - highlighting the seriousness of the decision - and I found it more and more disconcerting that, when the lead character does take the plunge, her story suddenly ends. It dawned on me that this convention sends readers a dark subliminal message - that marriage equals “The End”. Which raises the question “Just what, exactly, is it the end of?” Is it simply the end of the book, or could it signify the end of life worth reading or writing about?

Judging by some of the things Jane Austen told her nieces and nephews about the later lives of her characters, we think not.

That’s it for this week’s Friday Bookblogging (actually on a Friday!), and always remember, Gentle Readers: Books Are Nice!