Your online source for Jane Austen and her legacy
From the desk of Laurel Ann Nattress: Manners meet mayhem again in the second Being a Jane Austen Mystery, Jane and the Man of the Cloth. It is 1804 and Jane and her family are traveling by post chaise to Lyme Regis on the Dorset coast to escape the oppressive summer heat in Bath when... Continue Reading →
Our Janeite sensibilities tell us that the notion of Jane Austen as a vampire is pretty wacky. It’s just so hard to visualize “our” Jane as one of the undead, still here after two hundred years, and struggling with life challenges and her condition. Author Michael Thomas Ford understands this too. He has created a... Continue Reading →
From the desk of Laurel Ann Nattress: Imagine being present when Jane Austen’s unknown personal journals are discovered in an outbuilding on an ancient Maryland estate, Dunready Manor. Your friends the Westmoreland’s are distantly related to the authoress, and after restoration, they place the manuscripts in your care before they are donated to a major... Continue Reading →
From the desk of Christina Boyd: Jane Austen. Fact: born December 16, 1775; died July 18, 1817 at age 41. Fact: never married. Fact: wrote six complete novels, including a few unfinished works, and juvenilia. Fact: lived out her life in a quiet Chawton Cottage with her older, spinster sister Cassandra and aging mother. Also... Continue Reading →
It is 1797, and twenty-one-year-old Jane Austen’s first attempt at publication, First Impressions, has been "Declined by Return of Post". Disheartened, but not dejected, she attends the Basingstoke Assembly with her sister Cassandra. One would think that “to be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love,” not to be turned into... Continue Reading →
Stepping into the 21st-century, Elizabeth Aston’s new novel Writing Jane Austen offers a completely different vintage of Austen inspired paraliterature than her previous six books based on Pride and Prejudice characters and their families from the early 19th-century. Set in present-day London, readers will immediately discover that Austen’s influence of three or four families in... Continue Reading →
From the desk of Virginia Claire Tharrington: In the new novel Dearest Cousin Jane, author Jill Pitkeathley paints a wonderful portrait of Jane Austen’s cousin Countess Eliza de Feuillide. Eliza seems to have had an intoxicating effect on most of the Austen family, but Henry, James, and Jane are the most taken with her. It becomes... Continue Reading →
I have read a few Austenesque books in my day. Am I jaded? Hope not. I usually know by the end of the third chapter if it has wings: a fresh concept skillfully rendered, Austen allusions or her characters reverently portrayed and humor in the form of wit and irony, please. I know. It’s a... Continue Reading →
Could Jane Austen’s classic novel Pride and Prejudice have been based on the courtship of Elizabeth Garrison and William Lacey, a Regency-era couple who appear to be the doppelgangers of the legendary Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy? The possibility is intriguing to Maggie Joyce, a 22-year old American working in England after WWII who hears... Continue Reading →
Jane Austen’s novels brim with irony, witticism, and in the end, a gentle reprove or two. It is why I love her writing. Few authors can deliver this dry, deft and wickedly funny style. Michael Thomas Ford is one of them. His latest novel Jane Bites Back is more than a gentle joke, it is... Continue Reading →
Here’s a new novel that tugged at my heartstrings and validated my belief that if the world was run according to Jane Austen, we would be much smarter and happier. Enuff said! Fifteen-year-old Ellie Barnett is a bookish geek. She excels at academics, but according to her caustic older sister, she is digging herself into... Continue Reading →
The winners of the 2009 Jane Austen Short Story Award were announced by author and Chair of Judges Sarah Waters at Chawton House Library on Saturday, July 18th during the New Directions in Austen Studies Conference. The first prize of ÂŁ1000 went to Victoria Owens with her winning entry Jane Austen over the Styx. Sarah Waters described... Continue Reading →
