Review by MJ Ryan

When tackling the continuation of another author’s unfinished story, the new author must decide whether to try to divine from the available text which direction the original author was going or whether to take the characters in a new direction. I’m not sure it can be easily determined where Jane intended the characters in The Watsons to go. Maybe that’s why it remained during Austen’s lifetime a mere fragment, and maybe that’s why Aiken decided that the latter avenue would be best. Since it would be difficult to completely review the book without giving away a spoiler or two I will give a succinct two sentence review for those who don’t want to be spoiled: as a historical drama the book mostly works. As a continuation of what Jane Austen started, it falls short. For those not worried about being slightly spoiled, read on. (more…)

Wordcandy.net is having a giveaway–basically the same one we had last week, with five winners of a Jane Austen-related Sourcebooks title. So if you weren’t one of the winners in our drawing, check it out!

And there is still time to enter the current AustenBlog giveaway of a copy of the new paperback edition of Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict by Laurie Viera Rigler.

To celebrate the paperback publication of Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict by Laurie Viera Rigler, we are giving away a copy of the new paperback edition of the novel. To be entered in the drawing, send your full name and mailing address and your Jane Austen Addict confession to austenblog AT gmail DOT com. How have you embarrassed yourself for Jane Austen? (And yes, this is open to readers outside the U.S.) ETA: entries due by Saturday, May 10, at 10 p.m. U.S. Eastern time.

Congratulations to the winners of last week’s Spring Book Giveaway contest: Rebecca W. won a copy of The Darcys Give a Ball by Elizabeth Newark; Vicki R. (aka Baja Janeite) won a copy of Emma and Knightley by Rachel Billington; Marybeth won a copy of The Watsons and Emma Watson by Joan Aiken; Mariflor won a copy of Old Friends and New Fancies by Sybil Brinton; and Vicki K. won a copy of The Pemberley Chronicles by Rebecca Ann Collins. The winners all will receive notification e-mails shortly.

We recently added several titles to our collection of e-texts at Molland’s Circulating-Library for the reading enjoyment of all Janeites.

As a result of many user requests, we’ve expanded the section on Jane Austen’s work to include Lady Susan, Love and Freindship (which includes Love and Freindship, of course, Lesley Castle, The History of England, and other juvenilia), and The Watsons. We are considering adding Sanditon as well so it will be included in the all-texts search index.

One addition that we’re really pleased about is a subject guide to the third edition of Jane Austen’s letters, edited by Deirdre Le Faye. The index is meant to complement the existing biographical, topographical, and general indices in the letters. Del Cain, a retired librarian from Florida, made these notes for his own use on index cards, which he then typed up. He asked for our help in putting the index online, and we have arranged it by one letter of the alphabet per page. We are trying to think of a way to make the index downloadable and printable without it being a huge PDF.

Janeites who have been enjoying her work on the Internet for a long time will remember Cathy Dean’s e-texts archive, which included some biographies and introductions to various editions of Jane Austen’s novels. Word reached us last year that the site had gone dark, though the texts were still available via the Internet Archive (but for how long?). We managed to track down Ms. Dean and ask if we could transfer the e-texts to Molland’s, and she gave her permission. We thank her for it! Among the items we’ve transferred are two book-length Austen biographies, Jane Austen and Her Times by G.E. Mitton (which is very charming) and Jane Austen by O.W. Firkins (less charming, but interesting to read from a historical perspective).

We’ve also included two family biographical works: James Edward Austen-Leigh’s A Memoir of Jane Austen and Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters: A Family Record by William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh (the original 1913 text). There also are some new shorter pieces. We have a stack of other texts to scan and add to this growing collection, so stay tuned! In the meantime, we hope you enjoy reading some of these texts, which are fascinating from a historical perspective. The 21st and even the 20th century have no lock on Jane Austen scholarship. Also, we’re very interested in user feedback, so let us know how you use the texts and how they can be improved.

Perhaps we expect too much from a site called “On Line Opinion” (you know what they say about opinions and a certain vulgar body part…everyone’s got one) but this fellow’s essay about God in Jane Austen’s novels is rather ill-informed even for the World Wide Web.

It is safe to say that God does not appear as a character in the novels of Jane Austen. The church is certainly present as a respectable profession for second sons, but such sons are not moved by any religious sensibility but by the necessity of obtaining a place in society.

Clergy may be enthralled to worldly prestige and goods like Mr Collins in Pride and Prejudice or simply solid and noble like Edmund in Persuasion but they do not appear to be moved by the Spirit of God. Indeed they show little difference in character to any other character in the novels.

We would recommend that the author read Irene Collins’ fine works on Jane Austen, particularly Jane Austen and the Clergy, before attempting to write upon this subject again. (We also would recommend Jane Austen, the Parson’s Daughter.) He would then be informed that all of Jane Austen’s clergymen (yes, even Mr. Collins) are very much representative of the clergy of her time. We would also recommend Irene Collins’ books for our readers as well!

All kinds of book news this week! (Actually we’ve been saving it up.)

Alert Janeite Carol let us know that romance author Mary Balogh is working on an Austen-related anthology project with several other authors.

And I have just agreed to participate in another anthology, this one the brainchild of Susan Krinard, who thought it would be fun to write paranormal novellas based on various Jane Austen novels. She had already recruited Colleen Gleason and Janet Mullany by the time she asked me. I was hesitant as I have never written anything paranormal, but I always find it difficult to resist a challenge, especially when it involves nothing more arduous than using the imagination. And so I have my sights set upon making something paranormal of the basic plot idea of Persuasion. The tentative title for the anthology is Bespelling Jane, and it will contain two historical and two contemporary novellas. You may watch for it some time in the future–if we can catch the interest of a publisher, that is!

Keep your tongues in your cheeks, ladies, and we suspect it will work a lot better.

Hot on our discussion the other day about Austen first editions and memorabilia, we have the results of an auction of a collection of first editions at Bloomsbury Auctions, which went for a lot less than you might expect.

Other highlights included a group of privately owned first edition Jane Austen books. Austen’s first book, Sense and Sensibility , 1811, had a contemporary author attribution of “Miss Austen,” and it sold for $24,200. Pride and Prejudice, also in three volumes, made $33,300; Mansfield Park fetched $6,460, Emma made $11,400, and Northanger Abbey sold for just above its higher estimate at $7,250.

Again, unclear if the listing of NA included Persuasion; most likely, as that book is not otherwise mentioned in the collection.

EADT has an article about the influence of playwright Elizabeth Inchbald (author of the infamous “Lovers’ Vows”) on Jane Austen’s work.

The latest edition of the Jane Austen Podnovel is now available.

Alert Janeite Amo sent us an article about a spoof rewrite of Shakespeare in “yoof-speak.” The author of the piece takes it to the logical conclusion and rewrites a certain opening sentence.

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife” could become “You’re loaded, but got no bird. You some sort of bender?”

On that note, Gentle Readers, that’s it for Friday Bookblogging. Until next time, always remember: Books Are Nice!

You might not be able to afford the inscribed edition of Emma described below, but you can be one of five lucky winners of one of the latest Jane Austen-related publications from Sourcebooks. They are giving five AustenBlog readers the opportunity to win their choice of the following books:

Old Friends and New Fancies by Sybil Brinton

Letters from Pemberley and More Letters from Pemberley by Jane Dawkins
(Note: These are two separate books–please only request one of them.)

The Darcys Give a Ball by Elizabeth Newark

The Pemberley Chronicles and Women of Pemberley by Rebecca Ann Collins
(Note: These are two separate books. Please only request one of them.)

The Watsons and Emma Watson by Jane Austen and finished by Joan Aiken

Emma and Knightley by Rachel Billington

Mrs. Darcy’s Dilemma by Diana Birchall

To be entered in a drawing to win one of these books, send an e-mail to austenblog AT gmail DOT com with your name, mailing address, and the title of the book you would like to receive, by 10 p.m. Eastern time, Friday, May 2, 2008.

ETA: For the Jane Dawkins and Rebecca Collins books, each author has two separate books. Please only request one title. Apologies for the confusion. For those who have requested both, we’ll put you down for the first one–they are a series–unless you e-mail us and tell us differently.)

The Press Association reports that a copy of Emma inscribed by Jane Austen to Miss Anne Sharp, the governess at her brother Edward’s estate, Godmersham, will be auctioned by Bonhams on June 24. (Perhaps this is the sale? The catalogue is currently not available.) The auction house expects the book to sell for £50,000. Inscribed? That’s ALL? We think six figures is not out of the question, though of course auctions are always iffy. A quote from the current owner, who wishes to remain anonymous:

“The novel had been sitting in my family library for at least three generations and it remains a mystery as to how the book first got there.”

Indeed!

Alert Janeite Sylvia sent us a video of Pride and Prejudice in alternate reality…

And if you prefer your Jane Austen a little more low-concept, Alert Baja Janeite sent us a video of a cartoon cat reading the first chapter of P&P. No catch, that’s exactly what it is.

Nibbles has a very relaxing voice, doesn’t he?

Spring has arrived at AustenBlog World Headquarters, and our thoughts lightly turn to summer relaxation. It’s time for a roundup of recent and upcoming Jane Austen-related book releases, and we think there are some you will want to add to your beach bag. We also have some other Jane Austen-related book news, so put up your parasol and read on.

First, the latest Dalziel and Pascoe detective novel from Reginald Hill is an updated homage to Sanditon.

The characters created by Miss Austen are brought into the modern setting of a seaside area which the local landowners and monied types are trying to make wealthy through health. When a titled lady at the head of this bid is found roasting on her own hog spit, Dalziel’s right-hand man Pascoe arrives to investigate.

Yikes! What a fate for Lady Denham! But this sounds like the perfect beach read–unfortunately it’s only available in the UK at the moment.

Radio Riel has some podcasts of discussions that took place after the recent PBS broadcasts of Jane Austen adaptations.

The Panorama of the Mountains blog tells us that Jane Austen’s books soothe the savage breast.

Everyone loves a (well-written) romance. When I’ve volunteered at the Prison Book Program, some prisoners request trashy romance novels, but we’re prohibited from sending them sexual content. So they’re sent books by Austen and the Brontes instead. No one’s complained to my knowledge.

Other books that have recently been released include Elizabeth Aston’s latest novel, The Darcy Connection (we should have a review this week); a reprint of Joan Aiken’s Emma Watson, a completion of The Watsons; Jane Austen: Her Golden Years by Muriel Keller Evans, a novel that seems to be covering the same ground as Miss Austen Regrets; and for those who prefer books of information, Hypocrisy and the Politics of Politeness: Manners and Morals from Locke to Austen looks like a scholarly take on an interesting subject.

Coming soon: the paperback version of Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict will be released in a week or so; the much-anticipated U.S. release of Captain Wentworth’s Diary by Amanda Grange also occurs this month; a reprint of the first Jane Austen Mystery, Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor, also comes out later this month. A reprint of Park Honan’s biography of Jane Austen is due any day; a “Brief Life” also will be out very soon; and we just spotted another Joan Aiken reprint, Eliza’s Daughter, due out in November.

That’s it for Weekend Bookblogging (hey, it’s still weekend in some places), so until next time, always remember, Gentle Readers: Books Are Nice!

JASNA has published the latest edition of Persuasions On-Line, which has the theme “Global Jane Austen.” Articles include (and how timely is this, after the news today about the casting of Sense and Sensibilidad?) “A la Señorita Austen: An Overview of Spanish Adaptations” by Carmen Romero Sanchez; AustenBlog reviewer Allison Thompson on “Trinkets and Treasures: Consuming Jane Austen,” which, knowing the authoress as we do, we are sure will be both amusing and instructive; and articles on Jane Austen in Japan and Turkey, the South Indian adaptation of S&S, Jane Austen and the French Revolution–well, our head is spinning. Turn off the bally movies and go read!

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…)

The Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA) has posted a preview of the next edition of its annual journal, Persuasions, which will be sent to JASNA members in May or June. As usual, the journal features essays from the latest Annual General Meeting, which this past year had the theme “Discovering Emma in Vancouver,” and as usual was a great long weekend packed with information and fun. We find that between the pre-AGM preparation of re-reading the novel, the weekend of presentations and discussions, and then reading the essays a few months later, we truly gain new insights into these novels that we’ve enjoyed so many times before.

It’s not too late to get your copy of Persuasions; if you join JASNA by May 1, you’ll receive Persuasions No. 29, the spring issue of JASNA News, and get an early opportunity to register for this year’s AGM, to be held in Chicago.

While you’re waiting for your copy of Persuasions to arrive, check out the latest issue of Persuasions On-Line, which also has several essays from the AGM and a great selection of “Miscellany” articles as well! You can also check out back issues of POL as well as the full text of several out of print editions of Persuasions. We can’t encourage our readers strongly enough to check them out.

Review by MJRyan

“It seemed a harmless invitation, after all…”

So begins the description of Diana Birchall’s sequel to Pride and Prejudice, Mrs. Darcy’s Dilemma. When you read on and realize that the invitation was extended to two of Lydia and George Wickham’s daughters you realize that trouble will ensue. Once the two girls arrive on the page you realize what kind of trouble, who will instigate it and how and what the outcome will be. However, I’ve found that predictable plots are much more palatable when they’re executed well, and Mrs. Darcy’s Dilemma is well executed and, more importantly, enjoyable.

The story begins twenty five years after Pride and Prejudice and while there is plenty of attention paid to Mr and Mrs Darcy, it is the second generation of the Darcys, Wickhams and Bingleys that drive the action of the book. It should be no surprise that the couple with the least amount of sense and money have the most children. Lydia, ever the beggar, writes to Elizabeth and begs her to allow her two oldest daughters to visit, hoping with very little attempt at subterfuge to throw them in the way of young, rich men. Honestly, it is a bit astounding that Elizabeth and Darcy would agree to the visit at all. Birchall, being an adept storyteller, had little trouble convincing me.

Despite the title’s implication, Elizabeth is not the main character nor is the story entirely from her point of view. The action moves along at a brisk clip, switching between points of view, with possibly a bit too much page time dedicated to the more irritating characters from Pride and Prejudice in the middle of the book. Even when my teeth were set on edge by Lydia’s sense of entitlement, Mr. Collins’ speeches and Lady Catherine’s arrogance and pride, I admired Birchall’s ability to faithfully capture Austen’s characters.

Mrs. Darcy’s Dilemma, while not focusing entirely on the characters from Pride and Prejudice, is true to the source material in tone, language and characterizations and would be a satisfying read for fans of Austen paraliterature.

Alert Janeite Dana sent us a link to a blog post about Jane Austen the Medievalist, riffing off the New Yorker article we posted about in last week’s Bookblogging.

Alert Janeite Maria L. sent us an article about a book that could have been written by Charlotte Lucas. The premise is that women shouldn’t wait for the perfect man to marry, but grab the first half-decent one that comes along.

She says what makes for a great courtship doesn’t necessarily make for a great marriage. “I think, for a lot of people, if they actually went with (Jane Austen’s) Mr Darcy, they might not be that happy. What is he like dealing with diapers and paying the bills?”

We think Mr. Darcy employs people to do those sort of things for him, actually. And we think the premise of this book is very sad, indeed.

A poll reveals that one in ten British students confess to watching film adaptations rather than reading the books for class assignments. This is news?

A book of short stories written by Dalziel and Pascoe author Reginald Hill includes a sequel to Emma.

And who but a writer of Hill’s calibre would have the brass neck to take on Jane Austen at her own game and write a sequel to Emma, set 20 years after Miss Woodhouse’s marriage to Mr Knightley.

About ten dozen fan fic writers and Emma Tennant?

The couple are childless and still living with Emma’s creaking-gate father, a fact which has probably driven the once-perfect squire into a dissolute life in politics. Back into their lives comes the now-widowed Frank Churchill, who is keen to save Emma from a life of debt.

Miss Austen would, I feel, have been shocked but amused.

And she would have referred the author to her nephew’s Memoir, which included the information that Jane Austen said that Mr. Woodhouse survived Mr. and Mrs. Knightley’s marriage only by two years. But after all, there must be murder, and government cares not how much.

In other paraliterature news, Colonel Brandon’s Diary by Amanda Grange will be out in July 2008! (UK hardback edition–there will be a U.S. paperback edition sometime in 2009.) There’s preordering information at the link.

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!

Review by Allison T.

Long ago, in the dark ages of 1999, when mastodons and cave men roamed the earth and there were “comparatively” few Jane Austen sequels out there (“comparatively” being a word used cautiously, meaning that there were already a lot of sequels published but certainly fewer than the scores produced annually in recent years), Mary Street’s The Confession of Fitzwilliam Darcy appeared to soothe the breasts of Darcy-fans craving another fix of their favorite hero. They were satisfied and life was good, except that the book was printed in a small run and became very difficult to find.

The Confession of Fitzwilliam Darcy is now being reprinted by Berkley Publishing Group for the delight of a new generation of Darcy-lovers. They will not be disappointed—this is a straight-forward retelling of the story from the gentleman’s viewpoint. “I know not how Miss Elizabeth Bennet contrived to bring herself to my notice throughout the course of that evening,” the Confession begins, and from this promising point plunges directly into an engaging exploration of Darcy’s feelings. (more…)

Review by Allison T.

With this promising opening sentence—“Emma Knightley, handsome, clever and rich, with a husband whose affection for her was only equaled by her affection for him, had passed upward of a year of marriage in what may be described as perfect happiness….”—Rachel BIllington explores the challenges of early married life in Emma & Knightley; Perfect Happiness in Highbury. Emma has little to vex her, at least at first. But there are clouds on the horizon.

Poor Jane Churchill has died in childbed and the distraught and half-mad Frank is roaming the countryside talking wildly of suicide. Both Mrs. Weston, Mrs. Robert Martin (Harriet), and Mrs. John Knightley (Isabella) are all expecting—why isn’t Emma pregnant, too? Then comes bad news about John Knightley’s financial affairs. Emma travels to London to support Isabella in the last weeks of her pregnancy and meets there the exotic and somewhat peculiar Philomena Tidmarsh and her young step-son, the Rev. Tidmarsh. What is Philomena’s relationship with the Foundling Hospital? She plays the harp as divinely as Mary Crawford, but is she really a lady? (more…)

Review by Allison T.

“The romantic attachments of one’s children are a constant distraction,” says Mrs. Darcy to her sister Mrs. Bingley, and such is the theme of Elizabeth Newark’s The Darcys Give a Ball (Sourcebooks, 2008). Originally published in 1997 as Consequence, the book’s subtitle is “A Gentle Joke, Jane Austen Style,” and indeed this work is both gentle and amusing. As for the children, well! Fitz Darcy (Mr. and Mrs. Darcy’s eldest) is in love with his cousin Amabel Bingley, while Henry Darcy is falling for Eliza Collins (the youngest of their children, described as a “changeling,” not exactly pretty, but possessing a pair of fine eyes). Meanwhile, spoiled Juliet Darcy is angling for the handsome and dashing Gerard Churchill.

In an effort to distract Henry, the Darcys decide to give a grand ball in Juliet’s honor. And who should they invite? (Take a deep breath here.) Well, the lovely Dorothea Brandon, of course, and her cousin Nell Ferrars, the two young Tilneys, Priscilla and Frederick, and Alexander and Paul Wentworth (their father has been made Admiral, we are happy to note). Mrs. Darcy, who confesses to always having had a slight tendre for George Knightley, takes care to invite the Knightley twins, Colin and Christopher, and the two Bertram girls (their father is now Sir Thomas) as well as their cousins Pamela and Angelica Yates. Of course, they must invite Georgiana’s daughter, Lucy, as well as Colonel Fitzwilliam’s two red-haired children, Torquil and Catriona (he married a Scottish lady). (more…)

Pray forgive the dearth of posting of late. We’ve developed a nasty allergy to the computer this week, but seem to be getting over it.

Continuing our theme of electronic books as we wrap up Read an Ebook Week, we were really pleased to hear from Linda (also known as Linda Fern), who has digitized a really valuable resource for Janeites, The Loiterer. From the introduction:

The centrepiece of this collection is James Austen’s The Loiterer, a periodical of sixty issues published in Oxford in 1789 and 1790. James wrote the majority of the issues with his brother, Henry, among others, contributing articles. After the final issue was published in 1790, James had the entire sixty issues bound into two volumes and published with a limited number of copies. A “pirated” Dublin edition was published in 1792.

[. . .]

After reading The Loiterer in its entirety, I considered it to be a valuable adjunct for understanding Jane Austen’s life, world and works. Also, it may possibly answer some questions that have eluded us as to what and when Jane Austen knew on some subject or other..

We agree! Linda also has collected the content of the late Ashton Dennis’ “Male Voices in Praise of Jane Austen” website and a series of essays about “Jane Austen and the Wars” by R. Jason Everett. We strongly encourage our Gentle Readers to check it out–and bookmark the site and plan to return, there’s lots of good stuff here to read.

Also expanding on our post of earlier this week, Harry T. has uploaded Mobipocket format ebooks of Emma (with the Brock illustrations), Jane Austen’s Minor Works, including just about everything that isn’t a novel, and the Brabourne edition of Jane Austen’s Letters to MobileRead.

Ms. Place at Jane Austen’s World has post about the Thomson illustrated Complete Jane Austen, with a link to Google Books.

And in the “What the Heck Is It?” department, Alert Janeite Julie P. sent us a link last week, and Maisy has also linked it in comments, to P&P by “DVD Bookshelf.” As near as we can figure, it displays the text onscreen as a narrator reads it. Is this supposed to be a film for the strictest purists or something? Besides, when we listen to an audiobook we like to multi-task: needlework, housework, craft projects, HTML coding…

That’s it for Weekend Bookblogging, Gentle Readers, and always remember: Books (including Electronic Books) Are Nice!

This post was made possible by Pat Benatar’s Greatest Hits, which we sung along with badly, with accompanying head banging and shoulder shimmying, to help us to break out of our blogging malaise. We even managed to wake up the Wickhams at the crack of 3 p.m. George just screamed at Lydia to “put on a (expletive deleted) shirt.” Oh my.