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!

We heard from Jeanne Kiefer, Janeite and professional survey research consultant, who has put together a survey to get a statistical picture of the modern Janeite. She will present the findings at a breakout session at the JASNA AGM in Chicago this October.

My goal is to develop a fully rounded profile of current Jane Austen enthusiasts, so I’m eager to hear from as many Janeites as possible. Findings will be presented at the JASNA annual meeting (session title: Anatomy of a Janeite). What do Janeites really think about Jane, her works, her characters? Do they all fit the popular stereotype (tea-drinking librarians)?

The qualifications for taking the survey are having read the six novels and self-identifying as a Jane Austen fan. We took the survey, and there is no personally identifying information collected; one can, voluntarily, leave one’s e-mail address to participate in a further, more detailed survey. We would like to encourage all of our Gentle Readers who fit the criteria to take the survey.

As the Editrix is a frustrated sociologist, she is looking forward to the results. Though we always stress that the Janeite diaspora is not homogenous, such a survey will not only show a portrait of the “average” Janeite (if there is such a thing–we are thinking it will be more of a median/mean of Janeites) but also will display the wonderful diversity of our little world. We hope to be able to publish at least a link to the results here on the blog eventually.

The Winter 2007 issue of JASNA’s online journal, Persuasions On-Line, has been published and is available to read for free on the JASNA website.

We haven’t had a chance to read all the articles yet (or even close to it) but can’t wait to dig in. We can recommend two papers related to breakout sessions that we attended at the Vancouver AGM, Jane Fairfax’s Choice: The Sale of Human Flesh or Human Intellect by Lynda A. Hall and Reading Elegant Extracts in Emma: Very Entertaining! by Susan Allen Ford, who also is the editor of Persuasions and Persuasions On-Line. (Especially cool at that breakout: an actual copy of Elegant Extracts dated possibly from the eighteenth century!)

Another article which we knew about in advance and really looked forward to reading is Joan Klingel Ray’s essay about the extent of the relationship between Tom Lefroy and Jane Austen, which acts as a much-needed counterpoint to a lot of romantic speculation that’s been bandied about (and filmed!) in the past few years. Whether or not you liked Becoming Jane or the book that inspired it or the eye-sporking insanity that has surrounded it, we suggest you read that article!

And like the past few years, the Winter issue contains Barry Roth’s valuable Jane Austen Bibliography for 2006. Check your library and reading list and make sure you didn’t miss anything!

We would love to discuss this issue with anyone who is interested, and have started a discussion at Molland’s.

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.

Quite a bit, as our Gentle Readers already know!

The Gonzaga University student newspaper reported on the double lecture on Jane Austen recently held at the university.

Fowler said the Austen myth is everywhere, from films like Bollywood’s “Bride and Prejudice” to Wishbone to “I love Mr. Darcy” sweatshirts. Austen even has her own jokes, including “You might be an Austen redneck if you don’t think it’s weird that everyone seems to marry their cousin.”

Well, that’s funny!

Although Austen’s books are romances, she has been criticized for the lack of sexuality in her novels. The recent movie about Austen, “Becoming Jane,” addresses how she was incapable of having a sexual story of her own.

“But why do we need for Austen to have had a passionate romance?” Fowler asked. “Do we need to believe she wrote from experience about romance and disappointed desires?”

Austen’s books shouldn’t be put on a romantic pedestal. They must, instead, be examined on all levels, Fowler said.

Very true! And one can enjoy the novels on different levels at different points in one’s life.

Austen’s books are all about how people become attached and what leads to marriage, Kries said. Austen believed happiness was bound up in marriage.

However, the connection between the two people must not be merely romantic or only about wealth, as shown in “Pride and Prejudice” by Lydia’s and Charlotte’s unhappiness, Kries said.

But–was Charlotte unhappy?

Janet Todd, the Herbert JC Grierson Professor of English Literature at the University of Aberdeen, will give a public lecture titled “Dead Hands: Jane Austen’s manuscripts and other puzzles.”

Professor Todd, the Herbert JC Grierson Professor of English Literature, will explore the intriguing question of who possesses past works and dead authors, including whether famous writers are primarily celebrities who should fulfil the public’s desires at any particular time in history. Focusing on how evidence from literary manuscripts can conflict with the demands of readers and literary critics, Professor Todd will refer to her innovative research into selected texts by Jane Austen and Percy Bysshe Shelley.

The event begins at 6.00pm in King’s College Centre on the Old Aberdeen campus, and will be followed by an informal wine reception.

Places are free, and can be booked online via the web: www.abdn.ac.uk/inaugurallectures or by telephone: (01224) 273874.

As always, if any of our Gentle Readers attend this lecture, we would love a report!

Alert Janeite Sarah forwarded an announcement about a conference at Chawton Library on November 8, 2007 from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. The conference is titled “Remapping Austen: Jane Austen in Europe and Beyond.” Speakers include Beatrice Battaglia, Isabelle Bour, Peter Cochran, Gillian Dow, Anthony Mandal, Frauke Reitemeier, Elinor Shaffer, Brian Southam, and Suzan van Dijk.

“Remapping Austen: Jane Austen in Europe and Beyond” is a one-day colloquium being held to mark the launch of “The Reception of Jane Austen in Europe”, edited by Anthony Mandal and Brian Southam, and published by Continuum as part of the *Reception of British and Irish Authors in
Europe* series (general editor Elinor Shaffer) in August 2007. Taking Austen’s European reception as their starting point, the papers presented by an international panel of scholars will examine the presence of Austen and her contemporaries across Europe from the 19th century to the present day. Registration, which includes refreshments and lunch, costs £35.

More information, including a complete program listing, is available at the Chawton Library website.

Alert Janeite Lady Jane let us know about a panel discussion at Gonzaga University titled “What Can We Learn from Jane Austen?” The discussion will take place on Thursday, October 18, 2007 in the Wolff Auditorium. See Lady Jane’s blog for the details.

Alert Janeite Sarah sent us a link to a conference on “Jane Austen and Endings” sponsored by the Institute of English Studies and the Jane Austen Society on Saturday, 17 November, 2007, at the University of London. The speakers include Elizabeth Eger, David Selwyn, Ashley Tauchert and Emma Clery, who “will investigate Jane Austen’s often ambiguous and knowing endings.” The registration fee is £30, £20; for members of the Institute or the Society.

A conference on “Jane Austen and Comedy” will be held on 29-30 November at LaTrobe University, Melbourne, Australia. The speakers include Germaine Greer, John Wiltshire, Jon Spence, Susannah Fullerton, and many more. There are several registration options to fit all budgets.

It’s not quite autumn yet, but there is a crispness in the air around AustenBlog World Headquarters (though we no doubt will be reduced to a state of continual inelegance again before the month is out) and the days are growing shorter. We’ve been running across lots of interesting and thoughtful articles about Jane Austen and her work and other books inspired by them lately, and we have been saving them to share (harvesting them, if you will) for this week’s Friday Bookblogging. (more…)

Alert Janeite Lisa sent us a link from Inside Higher Ed in which Austen scholar Devoney Looser wittily answers the eternal question: Why Jane Austen?

I’m having a similarly mixed reaction to the latest wave of Austen mania in the U.S. and U.K., shifting nervously, while approaching it with a combination of anxiety and dread. I know that all English professors worth their salt should be constructing some theories and responses now, in advance of being cornered by colleagues and co-workers and co-eds, so as not to have to resort to the professorial and clichéd. What will we say when asked about Anne Hathaway’s Becoming Jane (2007); about upcoming The Jane Austen Book Club film, with its star-studded cast; or about PBS’s planned 10-week winter 2008 airing of the Complete Jane Austen on “Masterpiece Theatre”?

What’s the witty, cynical comeback to this cultural flowering of Austen-related stuff, I find myself wondering: “Can’t wait to see it!” “Wish I’d thought of it first!” “The Decline and Fall of Austen’s Empire.” “A tippet in the hand is worth two in the bush.” “A stitch in the huswife saves nine.” “Don’t look a gift pianoforte in the mouth”?

Read the whole thing, it’s hilarious!

…but that doesn’t stop us costume geeks from getting all obsessed, does it now?

Syracuse University English instructor Amy Leal discusses her obsession with period costume and how it does not always quite mesh with her academic pursuits.

It doesn’t do to admit to such activities in academic company. Kipling popularized the term “Janeites” in a story about an Austenite Masonic Lodge created by soldiers to get them through the horrors of the Great War. Being a member of what one critic called the “frilly bonnet brigade” is a bit like joining that secret society. In her book on Austen fandom called Janeites, Deidre Lynch cautions “the career-conscious critic against letting the wrong people know of her desire to, for instance, wear Regency costume and dance at a Jane Austen Literary Ball.” Making replicas smacks too much of scholarly dilettantism, of playing dress up with the canon like a little girl or boy tottering around in mother’s gigantic heels with a slash of forbidden carmine on the lips.

She comes up with an excellent reason (which also will do for the study of history in relation to literature, as well):

I make clothing reproductions because I am fascinated with the “felt life” (to appropriate a Henry James term) of past eras. What did Regency hair smell like? What did cheddar cheese taste like back then — tangy from some subtle differences in soil and fodder two centuries ago that we would be hard pressed to define? What was it like to wear Charlotte Brontë’s silk traveling dress (pattern available from the Northern Society of Costume and Textiles) after wedding Arthur Bell Nicholls? How might such considerations have influenced the writing of the period? I want to know how Emma combated bad breath and what the bristle of a muffin seller’s cheap linsey-woolsey felt like on the wrists.

Works for us.

Regency corsets (when daring misses wore them at all) were designed to push up and smooth down (except for a horrifying contraption known as a “steel divorce,” which separated the breasts into distinct pointed silos) and accentuate the high waistline.

Weren’t we just saying that?

Thanks to Alert Janeite Lisa for the link.

For those who would like to know more about the clothing of Jane Austen’s time, Serena Dyer of Pemberley Designs will be publishing a free quarterly e-newsletter on period costume, Dressing Jane. The first edition, concentrating on the dress of the 1790s (the period in which Becoming Jane takes place, if you are interested) will be mailed on August 10, so make haste and sign up!

Alert Janeite Lorna sent us a link to an announcement from Goucher College that Jane Austen scholar Devoney Looser, associate professor of English and literature coordinator at the University of Missouri, Columbia, has been named Goucher College’s 2007-2008 Burke Jane Austen Scholar-in-Residence.

Looser, the author of British Women Writers and the Writing of History, 1670-1820, will complete a weeklong research residency in the Jane Austen Collection of Goucher’s Julia Rogers Library next March, and she also will consult with students and faculty and deliver a public lecture.

We will try to keep an eye out for the announcement of the time and place of the public lecture.

Oxford University’s Romantic Realignments, described as “An Interdisciplinary Graduate Seminar in Literature and Cultural History 1780-1830,” will have several sessions dedicated to Jane Austen during the current term. Unfortunately one has already passed, but there is time to catch the others, and the seminars are open to the public.

We heard from Arnie Perlstein, who will be giving one of the seminars and has set up a blog with information about his presentation, “So you think you know all the right answers to all the right questions about Jane Austen’s Emma?” on Thursday, June 14. The questions for which he will be providing alternative answers are listed on the blog. If any of our Gentle Readers is in the neighborhood, we would love a report from this event.

The Editrix has had several encounters with Mr. Perlstein on various mailing lists but had no luck in convincing him that before looking for “secret subtext” one should perhaps seek mastery over the words that Jane Austen actually wrote. Just saying.

Goucher College will break ground today for a new multi-use facility to be called The Athenaeum, which will house, among other things, the library’s special collections, including the Jane Austen Collection. The plans for the new building are pretty impressive! The Athenaeum will open in autumn 2009.

Since AustenBlog has many new visitors, we take this opportunity to direct our Gentle Readers to Alberta Burke’s notebooks, which Goucher College has scanned and placed online for the enjoyment of all Janeites. The notebooks are sort of the analog predecessor of AustenBlog. Don’t miss all the little tidbits about the 1930s Helen Jerome Broadway production of P&P and the filming of P&P 1940 (girlfriend tried to score a shooting script)! Be warned, a Janeite can spend hours and hours just clicking away here. The notebooks are a small part of Mrs. Burke’s lifetime collection of Austeniana, which includes first editions, letters, and other items, all of which were donated to Goucher, her alma mater, upon her death in 1975. Mrs. Burke’s husband, Henry Burke, was one of the founders of JASNA.

Goucher College is accepting applications for the Jane Austen Scholar-in-Residence Grant for the 2007-2008 academic year.

The residency offers the selected scholar a week to research Goucher’s Austen collection, work with related undergraduate classes, and present a public lecture on an Austen-related topic. The grant also provides a $1,000 stipend, travel expenses and accommodations.

Good luck to the applicants!