Your online source for Jane Austen and her legacy
From the desk of Sarah Emsley: Is it easier or harder to write if you’re also responsible for feeding and looking after your family? “Composition seems to be impossible, with a head full of joints of mutton and doses of rhubarb,” Jane Austen wrote to her sister Cassandra in September 1816, after a period in... Continue Reading →
From the desk of Kimberly Denny-Ryder: Jane Austen’s works have given us countless characters to fall in love with: Elizabeth Bennet, Fitzwilliam Darcy, Catherine Morland, Henry Tilney, Anne Elliot, Captain Frederick Wentworth, and Elinor & Marianne Dashwood. Along with these major players, Austen sprinkles in minor personalities who play a very small role in the... Continue Reading →
From the desk of Laurel Ann Nattress: I recently read Havisham, a prequel and retelling of Charles Dickens Great Expectations, one of my favorite Victorian novels. The choice to expand the back story of the minor character Miss Havisham, the most infamous misandry in literary history, was brilliant. Jilted at the altar she was humiliated... Continue Reading →
From the desk of Christina Boyd: The Austen Addicts series has evolved through the years into a guilty pleasure for me. Happy Birthday Mr. Darcy is Victoria Connelly’s fifth installment in this contemporary romance series loosely inspired by Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. The novella reunites us with her original characters from the first in... Continue Reading →
From the desk of Jenny Haggerty: With only half a dozen speeches in Pride and Prejudice Mary Bennet still manages to make an impression. Bookish, socially awkward, and prone to moralizing, it’s hard to picture her as the heroine of a romance novel. Though I’d laugh along at her cluelessness Mary has always had my... Continue Reading →
From the desk of Lisa Galek: Many fans of Jane Austen’s Emma have described it as one of the first mystery novels. A mystery novel with no major crimes or dead bodies. Well, The Highbury Murders seeks to change all that. The game is afoot! The novel takes place about a year after the events... Continue Reading →
Please help me welcome multi-talented author Syrie James. In addition to her best-selling The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen, Syrie has written eight critically acclaimed novels in the historical fiction, romance, young adult, and paranormal genres. Renowned for her spirited heroines, swoon-worthy heroes and romantic plots, who better to chat with us during Valentine’s week,... Continue Reading →
From the desk of Kimberly Denny-Ryder: Life is a series of calculations, steps, and decisions that make up all of our experiences. What would happen if we had the ability to see how certain decisions affected the rest of our lives? Would we willingly change our fate and the fates of others or would we... Continue Reading →
Tea passed pleasantly, and nobody seemed in a hurry to move. – Jane Austen, Emma, Chapter 41 Taking tea is so quintessentially British. You cannot think of that noble nation without envisioning its residents with a teacup in one hand and a cucumber sandwich in the other. English novelist Jane Austen mentions tea no less... Continue Reading →
From the desk of Kimberly Denny-Ryder: Mary Lydon Simonsen is one of the most versatile Austen fan fiction writers out there. She’s given us contemporary Pride and Prejudice retellings that take place in WWII England, what-ifs that pose Georgiana Darcy and Anne de Bourgh as matchmakers, stories where Mr. Darcy is a werewolf and one... Continue Reading →
From the desk of Laurel Ann Nattress: Please join us in celebration of the new release of author Jennifer Paynter’s debut novel, The Forgotten Sister: Mary Bennet’s Pride and Prejudice, published this month by Lake Union Publishing. Jennifer has joined us to chat about her inspiration to write her book, a revealing look at one... Continue Reading →
"You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you." - Mr. Darcy, Pride and Prejudice, Ch 34 Today we celebrate another anniversary of the publication of Pride and Prejudice on 28 January 1813 in London. It’s hard to top last year’s incredible, world-wide, over the top festivities, elevating Jane Austen and her most popular... Continue Reading →
