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!

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!

We are Bookblogging midweek since A. we didn’t get around to it over the weekend and B. It’s Read an Ebook Week! We have had our Cybook Gen3 for a few weeks now and it rocks our socks. Naturally one of the first things we did was download all of Jane Austen’s novels, plus Lady Susan, Love and Freindship, the Memoir, Life and Letters, and a couple of other interesting oddments to our Cybook. And not only do we have all of Jane Austen’s work (and work about her), we have books by the Brontës, Mrs. Gaskell, Mrs. Radcliffe, Fanny Burney, L.M. Montgomery, Dickens, and a metric truckload of Trollope–and much more–and we are using maybe 5 percent of the capacity of our 1GB SD card. We carry this device around with us daily. The Cybook is the thinnest and lightest reader with an eInk screen, though the cover adds some heft to it, but it fits easily in our smallish handbag. We have played with a co-worker’s Kindle and were extremely impressed by the ease of use. We thought the interface seemed kludgy before we used it, but it’s amazingly intuitive. We also have heard many wonderful things about the Sony Reader, and if you don’t mind or even prefer a backlit display there is the eBookwise, or you can use your Treo or BlackBerry or mobile phone or PDA to read eReader or Mobipocket format books. (We still have many eReader format books on our Treo.)

Incidentally, all of the books we mentioned above were free. We also received $50 in downloads of paid books from BooksOnBoard when we purchased our Cybook (haven’t used it all yet). But most public domain books, for all devices, are free to download from somewhere. Manybooks.net probably has the best selection, both of books and of formats; Feedbooks has a smaller selection but its books are really nicely formatted. Community members at MobileRead have digitized dozens of public domain books in various formats, and MobileReader Harry T. has uploaded lovely ebooks of Jane Austen’s novels in Mobipocket and Sony Reader formats, including the C.E. Brock illustrations from Molland’s and Solitary Elegance! We just downloaded five of the Big Six in Mobipocket format to enjoy on our Cybook.

Admittedly, ebook readers, especially the eInk readers such as the Cybook, Kindle, Reader, and iRex iLiad, which are the top of the line technology (and correspondingly expensive), are still in early adopter territory. We can see that they may not work for some readers; though we are really impressed with how well Amazon has done in making the Kindle work out of the box even for the non-tech-savvy and in providing a variety of content. DRM is an issue, which is going away with music but still very much an issue with ebooks; the main problem with DRM is portability between devices, and the Kindle and Reader use proprietary ebook formats. But for those of us who mostly read classics anyway, it’s not as much of an issue; there really is a tremendous amount of totally free public domain content out there, and everyone is at least talking about DRM. Whether it will do any good remains to be seen.

We used to say “Can’t curl up in bed with a computer, so we’ll never read ebooks.” Well, you can certainly curl up with one of the latest generation of readers; and some intrepid types even take them into the tub and on to the beach, properly protected of course. We still read and collect and enjoy paper books, but we are really enjoying our adventures in ebooks. Incidentally, stay tuned–we’ll be adding some new etext titles at Molland’s very soon! We’re happy to answer any of our Gentle Readers’ questions about ebooks or the Cybook in comments.

Speaking of digital text, JASNA has digitized Persuasions No. 10, which includes essays from the 1988 AGM in Chicago (which is, of course, where the AGM will be this year as well). The theme of the conference was “Jane Austen’s England” and the list of papers, both related to the conference and not, look fascinating.

The News Observer (North Carolina) has an article about the Everyman’s Library, currently featured at an exhibition at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill’s Wilson Library.

Early dust jackets were graced with Thomas Carlyle’s assertion that “The true university in these days is a collection of books.” The Everyman’s edition of Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” was graced with Sir Philip Sidney’s lovely line, “A tale which holdeth children from play and old men from the chimney corner.”

We’ve updated the list of upcoming books and those currently on the shelf in the menu at right. Hopefully we’ll get it together to do a post highlighting all the latest publications!

That’s it for Friday Weekend Midweek Bookblogging, and always remember, Gentle Readers: Whether electronic or paper, Books Are Nice!

Lots of bookblogging to do this week! Huzzah! *AustenBlog Cheerleading and Dance Team begins chanting “Books Are Nice! Books Are Nice!”*

First up we have a real treat: photographs of a first edition copy of Pride and Prejudice! Julie T. tells the story in an e-mail to the Editrix:

My wonderful son is visiting his girlfriend at Wesleyan University. Today they went to the school’s rare book room, and look what Jake asked to see! It’s a first edition, and please note the name inscribed in the front cover, “Harriet Gardiner.” What could be more appropriate for the owner of this book (other than, perhaps, Elizabeth Darcy)

Click on the thumbnails below for larger images:

Photos by Jake Zien

Thanks so much to Jake and Julie for sharing the images, and for allowing us to post them.

Speaking of Pride and Prejudice, Laurie Viera Rigler continues her series at About.com’s Classic Literature blog with a really lovely entry on P&P. (more…)

Laurie Viera Rigler continues her series on Jane Austen’s novels at the About.com Classic Lit blog, this week writing about Mansfield Park.

If you’ve ever had an opinion that your friends considered uncool, and you stuck to it despite ridicule and pressure, you’ll find a kindred spirit in Fanny Price, and you’ll want her reward to be the man she loves. However, if you’re still doing shots with your inner bad girl, you’ll be rooting for Mary Crawford to win the object of her, and Fanny’s, affections.

Heh.

Whilst trolling manybooks.net for free e-books, we happened on a site called The Best Media in Life is Free, which has a listing of free e-texts of books from 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. The listings are broken up into Pre-1700, 1700s (The first two on the list…The Monk and The Mysteries of Udolpho!), 1800s (including Jane Austen’s novels), and 1900s. Now that is what we call a reading list! We recommend manybooks.net for e-books in just about any format you need; and feedbooks.com also has a wonderful list of free public domain e-books, which have been beautifully formatted for easy and pleasant reading.

Speaking of e-books, a while back we snarked on the Kindle a bit, but in the past week had the opportunity to play with one. We take back our fugly comment, because the Kindle is anything but. It’s really quite cute! It’s tiny and clean-looking, and it makes using and reading e-books an incredibly easy experience. You just push a button and get a book in seconds; which might pose a problem if one is not careful with paid downloads, but feedbooks.com has set up a really easy way to get free, nicely formatted public domain e-books on your Kindle as easily as you download them from Amazon. Download their Kindle Download Guide, which installs as a book, and “shop” for free e-books right from the guide. We are having serious gadget lust and need to get an eInk e-book reader SOON! It probably still will be a Cybook Gen3; but we really love the ease of use of the Kindle.

Adventures in Reading reviews Jane Austen: Obstinate Heart by Valerie Grosvenor Myer.

Austen is described as a person with charm and wit, but also as an individual looked down upon socially as being rather “backwards” or common by her family later in life. Some of Austen’s nieces and nephews are described as rather snobbish and prudish (they would be entering the Victorian period after all) and Myers discusses how parts of Austen’s life were “white washed” in the years after her death by her family. Myers’ approaches a “sour grape” perspective on Austen’s life versus the romantic entanglements of her heroine’s.

Lori Smith, the author of A Walk With Jane Austen, was interviewed at the She Plants a Vineyard blog.

SPV: Many women love Jane Austen’s novels. What is it about her novels that are so timeless and that we can relate to?
Lori: There are lots of answers to that question—her writing is lovely, she herself had a wonderful wit and energy for life, which comes through in her stories, they’re full of humor and her characters are people that we still recognize today. And she’s writing about falling in love, which is an awful lot of fun on its own. But there’s much more substance to her than just the romance.

I think a big part of it is the character that Austen wove into her stories. They’re not so much about falling in love as they are about the kind of people who are allowed to fall in love, people whose characters have been refined, who have been willing to admit their own faults and change. They’re worthy. I think that gives her stories incredible strength—which sometimes movies and spin-offs miss.

We were referred to A Great Undoing, Natalie Jenner’s entry in the Amazon.com Breakthrough Novel Award competition. The novel is a modern retelling of Persuasion, set in Montauk, Long Island and Manhattan in the 1960s. You can download and read a free excerpt and leave feedback. The novel currently is a semi-finalist in the competition and will advance to the next round based upon the feedback that the excerpt receives, so get to it, Janeites!

And we are reminded that we have not updated our sidebar book links in a very long time, and hope to get to that task this week. That’s it for this week’s Weekend Bookblogging, Gentle Readers, and always remember: Books Are Nice!

Fanny grows up as an outsider, often made to feel like a burden on the household despite her housework and peacemaking efforts. When the two other girls in the family run away with a seductive neighbor, Fanny’s loyalties are torn between her own yearning for independence and a longing for acceptance from all the family factions.

Is this Fanny Price in Mansfield Park? Meet the little-known but very real Fanny Wollstonecraft, daughter of early feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and older half-sister to Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein and wife of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Fanny coped with her stepmother’s unrelenting criticism, sought inclusion with her half- and stepsisters, and craved love from her stepfather William Godwin in a household where a stepsister noted, “If you cannot write an epic poem, or a novel that by its originality knocks all other novels on the head, you are a despicable creature not worth acknowledging.” Fanny’s biography is handled with the tender sensitivity she never received during her short life.

“In the world of pragmatic compromise envisaged by Jane Austen at about the same time, enthusiastic Harriet [Westbrook, Shelley’s first wife] as Marianne Dashwood from Sense and Sensibility should have lived to find a kinder man, while compassionate Fanny could and should have gained the rewards earned by her namesake Fanny Price in Mansfield Park. Instead both encountered Shelley’s utopian absolutism.”

While Death and the Maidens: Fanny Wollstonecraft and the Shelley Circle is not about Jane Austen, this scholarly biography provides a thoughtful examination of the literary and philosophical influences of Jane’s time period, carefully researched and adorned with details. But a penchant for footnotes isn’t necessary to enjoy this book: it’s a fascinating story about the young women in the Wollstonecraft-Godwin household and how their upbringing combined with Shelley’s passionate influence to send the small family’s dynamics into turmoil. The “aristocracy of genius” encouraged by Godwin and Shelley was not without tragic results – leading to a poignant tale of love and death straight out of Romanticism in its own right.

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.

In honor of Jane Austen’s birthday (we guess), the Washington Post has a roundup/review of several recent books related to Jane Austen and her work. The author doesn’t come right out and say they’re all abominations, and in fact says some are quite good, but we think, if you will excuse the cliché, she is missing the forest for the trees. Oh, and missing something else as well…

Any search for the key to her 200-year survival as a beloved novelist combined with the current outpouring of television series, movies, books and even create-your-own-adventures runs smack into the hero of Pride and Prejudice, Henry Fitzwilliam Darcy.

Henry?!? Way to blow your legitimacy for reviewing this stuff in the second paragraph, sweetie, for the dashing Mr. D. uses that particular Christian name only in Bad Fanfictionland, written by women who can’t imagine themselves Lizzy moaning in ecstasy, “Fitzwilliam! Oh, Fitzwilliam!” Because why else change the poor guy’s perfectly good, usable Christian name, indeed the one that Jane Austen saw fit to bestow upon him? Which makes it good enough for us. We know it’s too bad he couldn’t have a nice, easy name like Colin or Matthew, but if you can’t handle the Fitzwilliam, we suggest you get out of the library.

Although, of course, Henry is a perfectly wonderful name for a hero and we like it a bunch.

Is there a danger here for Austen lovers? Is this derivative work a manifestation of admiration: the better the novels the more profound the tribute? Or do these doubly fictitious characters intrude? Does a married Lizzy Bennet, Emma seen through George Knightley’s eyes, or Caroline Bingley in avaricious pursuit of a wealthy husband creep into our minds and take up residence shoulder to shoulder with the characters their creator presented? Do we want to think of Lydia suffering from syphilis, or Lizzy having a miscarriage? Are these tributes or acts of vandalism?

Oh, for crying out loud. They’re just a bit of fun for Janeites who enjoyed the novels and want to learn something about her or her world, or just want a little more story. We’re glad the author addressed each book as an individual item, even if we don’t agree with all of her reviews, because at least she didn’t say they all stink on general principles. It’s one thing if they’re not your cup of tea, but that doesn’t mean they are necessarily bad. Each book deserves to be considered on its own merits.

That being said, while we and the other Austen authors we know take our work quite seriously and do our research and try to get it right and make it fun and enjoyable for our readers, ultimately we know they’re not as good as Jane Austen’s work and never will be. We’re just having some fun with it, and hoping to give some fun to our fellow Janeites, and maybe giving our fellow Janeites a different way to look at the novels, which makes the experience of reading them that much richer. And we submit there is nothing wrong with that.

At times, the better the sequel, the harder I find it to hold on to the originals. My new Mr. Darcy as a husband and father is not the romantic hero of Pride and Prejudice.

Oh, now who’s romanticizing? Mr. Darcy of the novel is not just the rich, handsome, brooding Alpha Male, he also is a kind master and landlord who takes care of his estate and, therefore, the welfare of people who are under his domain. We modern folks are brought up to the idea that Self-Determination Is Good and Feudalism Is Bad, and it’s not that we don’t agree, but placing oneself in Jane Austen’s world, the place of the master of a large estate like Pemberley is huge. He provides social security for the people who live on his estate. Some people might see that as exploitation, but Jane Austen, clearly, does not, because let’s face it, those people had no other safety net. There was no NHS, no unions, no welfare. There was just Mr. Darcy. That he takes his responsibilities seriously and ensures the livelihood of the people under his care is extremely important in Jane Austen’s consideration. It’s when Elizabeth finds out just how good a master and landlord is Darcy that she falls completely in love with him. Compare him to, say, Sir Walter Elliot, who does just the opposite, and see what we mean. Mr. Darcy the “husband and father” is probably not much unlike Mr. Darcy the squire, and if readers insist on romanticizing him, we think they’re missing the point.

But clearly, a large number of readers don’t care. They want to linger in those drawing rooms and take comfort from a society that knew exactly who took precedence at the dinner table. The tiny but vibrant business of becoming Jane is unlikely to die out anytime soon. What would Miss Austen have made of it all?

Is that the only way to find fascination in history? As a refuge? We think not.

And what would Miss Jane Austen have thought of it all? She probably would have wanted a cut of the profits, and who can blame her?

EDITED to make sense. Sorry, we have a splitting sinus headache and words aren’t working well for us at the moment.

Alert Janeite Lisa sent us an editorial from the Sydney Morning Herald about the importance–and pleasure–of reading, wisely quoting the Rev. Mr. Tilney, which is always a smart thing to do in our educated opinion.

The novel Northanger Abbey, one of Jane Austen’s less read works, has a gentle dig at the contorted plotlines and melodramatic expression of the gothic novels popular in the author’s day.

But still Austen offers a defence of the novel, having her hero Henry Tilney say, “the person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid”.

Today’s students need Jane Austen (and other authors who have stood the test of time) as much as ever. Good fiction is not a waste of time.

Preach it!

As well as helping us understand the world, fiction helps us understand ourselves. Jane Austen’s heroines are appealing (except, perhaps, the insipid Fanny Price)

Uh-oh….*runs as enraged Fannyfans burn down Sydney Morning Herald building*

Lisa also sent us a really funny article in the New Statesman by Sophie Gee, who has found a great new way to choose Christmas gift books: apply the Sir Walter Elliot test!

This new approach was suggested by the opening sentences of Jane Austen’s Persuasion, which give the best description of reading I know:

Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch Hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage; there he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one; there his faculties were roused into admiration and respect, by contemplating the limited remnant of the earliest patents; there any unwelcome sensations, arising from domestic affairs, changed naturally into pity and contempt as he turned over the almost endless creations of the last century; and there, if every other leaf were powerless, he could read his own history with an interest which never failed.

Even as we laugh at Sir Walter for his snobbishly trivial turn of mind, we admire Austen for putting her finger so exactly on what gives reading its delight: “occupation for an idle hour and consolation in a distressed one”. Which of us doesn’t have an equivalent of the Baronetage to take down in hours of need, hoping that nobody is looking?

Well, that would probably be Jane Austen’s books for us! And a few select titles by Georgette Heyer. Do read the whole article, it’s really fun.

The audio version of Laurie Viera Rigler’s Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict got a great review in Publishers’ Weekly:

Orlagh Cassidy is delightfully fun as Courtney Stone, a modern Los Angeles girl nursing a heartbreak who wakes up to find herself inhabiting the body and life of a Jane Austenesque Regency girl. Cassidy is spot-on with Courtney’s California accent, modern-day moaning about men, self-analysis and doubt, and sarcasm—and then, without missing a beat, flips easily into the proper, upper-class English tones of Jane (the Regency girl Courtney has replaced, whose accent came with the body), her pompous, controlling mother, her desperate suitor and her sympathetic best friend.

We are pleased to report that the U.S. release of Captain Wentworth’s Diary by Amanda Grange is available for preorder and will be released on May 6, 2008. Check out the cover on Amanda Grange’s website.

Lastly, we heard from Professor Janet Todd, who gave a great plenary talk at the JASNA AGM in Vancouver this past October. She has written a book called Death and the Maidens about the Wollstonecraft-Godwin-Shelley-Byron circle of Jane Austen’s lifetime–authors, poets, and amazing and sad lives. Prof. Todd found some kinship between Fanny Wollstonecraft, who committed suicide at 22, and Fanny Price. It sounds like a really interesting book, and insight into a very different kind of lifestyle than that which Jane Austen and her family–and even her characters–led.

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

The Cambridge Evening News reported that novelist and literary critic Valerie Grosvenor Myer, author of the biographical work Jane Austen: Obstinate Heart, took her own life this past August. Ms. Grosvenor Myer had suffered from Parkinson’s disease for over ten years.

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!

Review by MJ Ryan

A mix of travelogue, private journal and biography of Jane Austen, A Walk with Jane Austen: A Journey into Adventure, Love & Faith is the record of a single Janeite who travels to England to meander through the countryside in Jane Austen’s footsteps. She’s not looking for love necessarily, but how appropriate would it be if it just so happened to occur while shadowing the important places of the woman who has written the most celebrated love stories of the past 200 years? Talk about a great How I Met Your Father story to tell your children.

Smith deftly mixes biographical information about Austen throughout the book and you do begin to see how her life parallels Austen’s in subtle ways. The transitions from Austen’s life to Smith’s memories of growing up in a strict Christian home and her recounting of the challenges of living a Christian life are sometimes choppy and a bit of a stretch, but it was always interesting.

The copy I was given to review didn’t include a map of her travels and, as you may remember from an earlier review, I believe the inclusion of a map should be a literary law. This especially holds true for a book that is part travelogue. I’m happy to report that the published book does include a map of the places that Smith went, along with a detailed list of the sights she visited in each city.

While Smith’s Christianity is the bedrock of her life and the book, she’s never preachy and isn’t trying to convert the reader to her beliefs, nor is she trying to define Austen’s Christianity. However, if you are uncomfortable reading about, or just aren’t interested in, another person’s faith, then you might not enjoy this book. For those who do pick up the book, you will be met with an honest account of a single woman’s emotional journey through a difficult time of her life and you will applaud her courage to share her story with you.

Lori Smith has offered a copy of A Walk with Jane Austen: A Journey into Adventure, Love & Faith to a lucky AustenBlog reader. To enter the drawing, please send your full name and mailing address to editor@austenblog.com by 10 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday, November 7, 2007.

Lori Smith will be signing copies of her book, A Walk with Jane Austen: A Journey into Adventure, Love, and Faith, at the Borders store in Tysons Corner, VA, on November 13, 2007, at 7:30 p.m.

It is always amusing when one’s life turns into a Jane Austen novel. Currently we have the distinct pleasure of having Mr. and Mrs. George Wickham as upstairs neighbors. This is especially edifying and entertaining because the fabulous high-tech AustenBlog World Headquarters is contained within a rather old structure and we can hear all of their arguments. It’s better than anything on television.

For instance, one Saturday night, Mr. W. wanted to go to the pub and Mrs. W., apparently, did not. Begging and pleading did no good; bratty whining did no good; finally Mr. W. was driven to an extreme. He stood at the foot of the stairs (right where the plaster is cracked so the acoustics are especially good) and screamed up the stairs, “Fine! I’m going! And I’m going to find another girl and I’m going to f*** her and make sure you know about it!”

(Shockingly, Mrs. W. let him back IN when he returned a few hours later. She is a more forgiving woman than the Editrix; had Mr. W. belonged to us, he would have been sleeping on the lawn with the feral cats, surrounded by his belongings.)

This past Sunday, apparently Mr. W. had transgressed in some way, and she thought he should have brought her flowers. Mr. W. whined, “I would have BOUGHT you flowers if I had a CAR!” She opined that he could have walked around the corner to the produce place. He said he didn’t know the neighborhood well enough yet to go walking around somewhere he had never been. She whined that Mr. Denny would have bought her flowers. He countered that if he had money coming out his *** like Denny, he would have gone to college, and then he might have a car and could earn money; a rather circular argument that made us dizzy.

It is quite amusing to us that anyone could argue that Jane Austen had to “live” the experiences in her books; all she had to do was pay attention. People are so amusing; they are just like a book!

In other Austen-related book news, Alert Janeite Moe found a website with news about an upcoming Jane Austen-related book by Clare Harman, author of several biographies (including one of Fanny Burney that we have on our shelf).

My work-in-progress is Jane’s Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World for Canongate Books (UK) and Henry Holt (US). It’s a history of Austen’s fame, the changing status of her work and what it has stood for, or been made to stand for, in English culture in the two hundred years since her death. Starting with Austen’s own experience as a beginning author, her difficulties getting published and her determination to succeed, I explore the history of how her estate was handled by her brother, sister, nieces and nephews, the eruption of public interest in Austen in the last two decades of the nineteenth century, the making of her into a classic English author in the twentieth century, the critical wars that erupted as a result and, lastly, her powerful influence on contemporary phenomena such as chick-lit, romantic comedy, the heritage industry and film. Part biography, part cultural history, it’s a fascinating story, full of odd anecdotes and some new insights too.

It sounds great, and we look forward to reading it!

Lastly, congratulations to Laura G., whose name we drew to win a copy of Mr. Knightley’s Diary by Amanda Grange. Stay tuned for more swag from the AustenBlog Swag Trunk!

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

(On Saturday once again! We are determined to be caught up today.)

There are not just new Austen-related sequels and biographies and other works coming out these days, there also are new editions of her novels. Premier Books has released a set of the novels in Canada (they seem to only be available at Chapters) that have covers with a modern feeling: Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Persuasion, Northanger Abbey. One might also say they echo the film posters for P&P05 and Becoming Jane. Also, the Adventures in Reading blog posted new covers for the Vintage Classics Series editions that are taken from period fashion plates. We like those very much, even though the periods displayed might not match the setting of the book.

What do you think of these new book covers? And how many editions of the novels do YOU own? (We have: one set, Chapman editions; one set, softcover Everyman Library editions given out by the Daily Telegraph earlier this year, courtesy of Dear Friend of AustenBlog Kathleen; several Brock illustrated antique editions of various novels; assorted paperbacks that we pick up at the book swap to lend/give away, which are currently all with a co-worker; e-books in eReader and Mobipocket versions.) (more…)

Tomorrow (almost today, over there!) Emma Campbell Webster, author of Lost in Austen/Being Elizabeth Bennet, will be at the Jane Austen Festival in Bath. She will lead a Jane Austen adventure around Bath and then sign copies of her book.

On Wednesday, September 26, Patrice Hannon will be speaking at the 92nd Street Y (at Lexington Ave) in New York City from noon until 1 p.m. Her program is titled “Ask Jane: Things You Didn’t Know About Jane Austen and Her Heroines.”

…as she brings to life the “world according to Jane” from the point of view of Austen and her heroines. Hannon also shares some lesser known facts about the beloved novelist’s life.

Tickets are $16 and available online.

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…)

We were delighted to discover that Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters by Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh and William Austen-Leigh is now available for free download at Project Gutenberg. Life and Letters is the book that was later expanded and mostly rewritten by Deirdre Le Faye as Jane Austen: A Family Record, one of our favorite Jane Austen biographies.

If you are into e-books, the book is also available for free download in an astonishing selection of formats at Manybooks.net.

Thanks to the coders and Distributed Proofreading team that made the book possible for all of us e-book fans!

Naturally, all of Jane’s novels and some of the minor works/juvenilia are available for free download at both Project Gutenberg and Manybooks.net, as is J.E. Austen-Leigh’s Memoir (and at Manybooks.net).