Austenprose Celebrates It’s First Anniversary – What Would Dear Jane Say?

“For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours,

and laugh at them in our turn?”

How time flys when you are having fun!

Today is the first anniversary of Austenprose; — 365 days of celebration of the brilliance of Jane Austen’s writing in blog format. What would Jane Austen think of my gentle and sometimes sarcastic musing? I hope favourably with humor. For what do we live for but to make sport for our neighbors, right?

It has been an enlightening and joyful journey for me filled with discovery and surprises. In reflection, I can’t believe that I even created a blog, and own all the credit to its source, Jane Austen. For years I had read, admired and been delighted by her prose. When the Internet can along, I was intrigued by the possibility of creating a web site, but not being a geek, I was stifled. A big thank you to Wordpess for making it all so accessible, easy and fun.

I am fascinated by statistics, so here are a few to entertain you.

Austenprose has racked up 257 posts, 47 pages, 36 categories and 888 tags. I am very grateful for your contributions too and have happily read all 1,047 comments.

The most popular posts are…

1. Mansfield Park Review: No Hope of a Cure
2. Sense and Sensibility Cast Preview
3. Northanger Abbey: Our Hero Henry Tilney
4. Northanger Abbey Review: An Austen Adventure
5. Persuasion Review: “almost too good for me”?
6. Pride and Prejudice: Netherfield Ball
7. Pride and Prejudice: The Mystique of Austen’s Mr. Darcy
8. Lost in Austen: Droolgate as Darcy Does the Dip

If you see a trend here as I do toward the movie adaptation reviews, then you know what was of interest to Janeites this last year as we were privileged and frustrated by PBS’s The Complete Jane Austen series which aired all six of Jane Austen’s major novel adaptations between January and April. If anyone needs confirmation why a bad movie gets more attention and press, then Mansfield Park 2007 is proof. My reasons for it’s failures were obviously of interest as others also tried to figure out the mystery of the writer and directors interpretation.

We all need a little help from our friends, and I have been so grateful to other bloggers and web sites in the Jane Austen community and beyond for their advice and support. An extra big shout out to Ms. Place (Vic) of Jane Austen’s World and my co-blogger on Jane Austen Today who has been an incredible resource and wonderful inspiration! Here are some of the top referrers this last year. Thanks also for the 242 links to Austenprose!

1. AustenBlog
2. Jane Austen Today
3. Jane Austen’s World
4. Jane Austen Quote of the Day
5. Austentatious
6. Elegant Extracts
7. Dovegreyreader
8. KayeDacus

And then there are the glorious readers and your interesting and sometimes curious search engine terms that land you on my blog. Here are the top terms.

1. austenprose – 703
2. fanny knight – 286
3. imogen poots – 193
4. miss austen regrets review – 184
5. henry tilney – 175
6. miss austen regrets – 156 
7. lucy boynton – 144
8. mansfield park – 142
9. northanger abbey 140
10. jane austen gifts – 133
11. sense and sensibility heroine – 106
12. rebecca ann collins – 104
13. lost in austen – 101

And the most frequently asked funny and surprising search engine term is for the Jane Austen bobble head, which is my holy grail of Jane Austen toys. You can read my post about it here. If you are one of the lucky few to own one and want to pass it on, PLEASE contact me!

My top click on the blog is to Kali Pappas’ quiz, Which Austen Heroine are you? Yea Kali!

In looking back over the past year, I have much to be grateful for. I reviewed 20 Austen-esque books, and 12 movie adaptations, and hosted two novel events, Mansfield Park Madness and Go Gothic with Northanger Abbey. My first post was a quote from Pride and Prejudice of Mr. Darcy’s famous line about Lizzy being tolerable but not handsome enough to tempt him. I hope that my little corner of Jane Austen, has improved upon acquaintance also.

Many thanks to all of my faithful readers and Jane Austen friends.

Cheers,

Laurel Ann