Your online source for Jane Austen and her legacy
From the desk of Sophia Rose:
‘Murder’ and ‘Wickham’ in the same title makes any Jane Austen lover worth their salt sit up and take notice. Now, add that with an author name long associated with young adult sci-fi and fantasy, and that makes Claudia Gray’s The Murder of Mr. Wickham well-nigh irresistible.
The Murder of Mr. Wickham is both a historical mystery and pays homage as a sequel to not one, but all Continue reading “The Murder of Mr. Wickham, by Claudia Gray — A Review”
I am happy to welcome author Lona Manning to Austenprose today. She has graciously offered to share her latest Austenesque novel, A Different Kind of Woman with us. Inspired by Mansfield Park, this is her third book in her Mansfield Trilogy, all of which are variations on Jane Austen’s original.
Manning’s Mansfield Trilogy sets out to alter the original Regency-era story by pivoting the relationship of its main characters: Fanny Price and Edmund Bertram. There are also other changes that some will find beneficial and engaging. Are you as curious as I am if Fanny Price is no longer priggish? What is married life like for Edmund and his new wife?
If you are in the mood to experience a re-imagined Mansfield Park, then this is the series for you. Check out the book description and the exclusive excerpt supplied by the author. Continue reading “A Preview & Exclusive Excerpt of A Different Kind of Woman: A Variation on Mansfield Park (Mansfield Trilogy Book 3), by Lona Manning”
From the desk of Katie Patchell
For all its stylistic elegance and its iron-backboned heroine, Mansfield Park is the black sheep of the Jane Austen canon. It’s the book most likely to be placed at the bottom of “Which is your favorite Austen novel?” polls. Public opinion hovers somewhere between “That’s a book by Jane Austen?” and “Gross…cousins marrying.” For many readers, it’s the heroine that’s frustrating. Fanny Price is usually seen as duller than dishwater – her moral compass providing a guide for the plot, but no passion. Even though I’m a staunch fan of Mansfield Park and Fanny’s quiet strength, I can understand why not everyone enjoys it to the level I do. However, the novel’s understated beauty, full cast of characters who are neither fully good or fully bad and Jane Austen’s characteristic humor is all too good to miss. It is this magnetic, complex blend that I eagerly searched for in Jacqueline Firkins’ new Mansfield Park adaptation, Hearts, Strings, and Other Breakable Things.
The book opens with Edie, the heroine (based off of Fanny Price), en route to live with her kind but absent uncle and his unkind and controlling wife (switched around a bit and based off of Mrs. Norris). Edie doesn’t Continue reading “Hearts, Strings, and Other Breakable Things, by Jacqueline Firkins — A Review”
It’s Halloween today—the best day of the year to celebrate Gothic and paranormal fiction inspired by Jane Austen.
Gothic fiction was a big hit in the late 1700’s. Authors like Horace Walpole’s, The Castle of Otranto (1764), Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) and The Romance of the Forest (1791) influenced and inspired a young Jane Austen to write her own Gothic parody of the genre, Northanger Abbey, published after her death in 1817. If you have not had the opportunity to read it yet, it is hilarious. You don’t know what you’re missing!
Today there are many Austen-inspired paranormal novels featuring zombies, werewolves and vampires interlaced into her classic stories and characters. If you liked Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith , Mr. Darcy’s Bite by Mary Simonsen or Georgiana and the Wolf by Marsha Altman you might be ready for a spunky version of Austen’s creepmouse heroine from Mansfield Park, Fanny Price, like you have never seen her before.
Continue reading “A Preview & Exclusive Excerpt of Fanny Price, Slayer of Vampires, by Tara O’Donnell”
From the desk of Lisa Galek:
There are tons of ways to flirt… and just as many ways to break hearts in the process. A casual smile or a wink can lead to long-awaited romance or lots of unwanted attention. Claire LaZebnik explores all this and more in The Trouble with Flirting, her contemporary young adult update on Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park.
This story is all about Franny Pearson, a high school student from Phoenix looking to get some real-world experience for her college admissions essay. When Franny lands a summer internship as a costume designer with her Aunt Amelia, she ventures from home to work for the prestigious Mansfield College High School Theater Program. Even though her days are filled with sewing and sequins – Franny is determined to make some friends among the theater kids this summer. Continue reading “The Trouble with Flirting: A Novel, by Claire LaZebnik – A Review”
From the desk of Lisa Galek:
If you are one of those Austen fans who think it’s a shame that Mansfield Park is so rarely adapted for modern audiences, then The Beresfords will be a welcome addition to your reading list.
When six-year-old Frannie Price is removed from the care of her drug-addicted mother and sent to live in a foster home, her mother’s sister, Marie, and her husband, Paul, sweep in (at the instance of Paul’s overbearing sister, Terri) and bring the girl to live with them in California. There, Frannie grows up in a large, luxurious home with her four older cousins (step cousins, really. They’re her uncle’s children from his previous marriage).
The oldest, Tom, is clearly the troublemaker of the bunch. The two younger sisters, Rachel and Julie, spend most of their time either arguing or ignoring Frannie. Only Jonathan, a devout Christian who Continue reading “The Beresfords, by Christina Dudley – A Review”
Please join us today in welcoming author David Liss on his blog tour in celebration of the release of The Twelfth Enchantment, a new Regency-era novel featuring Jane Austen’s character Mary Crawford and a bit of magic, published by Random House.
There’s no bad girl like a Jane Austen bad girl. I’m not sure what it says about me, but I’ve always been fascinated by some of the worst women in Austen’s novel. Not the unlikable, begrudging, Continue reading “The Twelfth Enchantment Blog Tour with Author David Liss”
A new Austenesque book is being launched today, and after meeting Lily Berry, Cindy Jones’ unconventional heroine we may never look at Jane Austen’s novels in the same way again! Please welcome Cindy Jones on her first stop on the blog tour.
LAN: Congratulations Cindy! My Jane Austen Summer launches today. As a debut author that must be very heady. Can you share with us the premise of the book and what your inspiration was to write it?
CSJ: Thank you, Laurel Ann for hosting me on publication day. My Jane Austen Summer is the story of a woman who believes she may finally realize her fantasy of living in a novel when she is invited to a Jane Austen Literary Festival in England. The idea for My Jane Austen Summer developed after re-reading all six Jane Austen novels and feeling the pain of permanent separation at the last page. I craved a book that would allow me Continue reading “My Jane Austen Summer Book Launch Tour: Chatting with Author Cindy Jones & a Giveaway!”
From the desk of Christina Boyd:
Lily Berry is a needy, desperately unhappy dreamer who after reading “The Six” (Jane Austen’s six major works) has let her affection for dear Jane run wild—reading and re-reading the novels, and chronically sabotaging her personal life by “squeezing herself into undersized romances.” She finds herself at an all-time low when she is actually fired from her job for reading Mansfield Park, when she should have been working. (One wonders out loud if her boss would have been more sympathetic if she had been reading Pride and Prejudice?) Lily then discovers her father has been having an affair for years, and the recent death of her mother seems to free him to marry this Sue person. Not until her ex-boyfriend humiliatingly confronts her while she is stalking him, does she see the urgency in jettisoning from her present miserable life and escape to the past for “one Continue reading “My Jane Austen Summer: A Season of Mansfield Park, by Cindy Jones – A Review”
Mansfield Park is considered (by some) to be the dark horse of Jane Austen’s oeuvre and her heroine Fanny Price intolerable. Poor Fanny. She really gets the bum’s rush in Austenland. The patron saint of the weak, insipid and downtrodden, she is Jane Austen’s most misunderstood heroine. In fact, many dispute if she is the heroine of Mansfield Park at all, giving that honor to the evil antagonist Mary Crawford.
Much has been debated over why Austen’s dark and moralistic novel has not been embraced as warmly as its sparkling siblings. Personally, I delight in reading Mansfield Park and root for Fanny Price’s principles to prevail. So when I read a book announcement last July that Jane Austen’s classic would be re-imagined as a murder mystery “whereas Fanny is quite a pain in the arse in Austen’s version, Lynn’s [Shepherd] Fanny is an outrageous gold-digger”, Continue reading “Murder at Mansfield Park, by Lynn Shepherd – A Review”
Jane Austen’s novel Mansfield Park will be next up for a literary mash-up.
Bookseller.com reports that Beautiful Books, a London based publisher announced today that they have purchased Murder at Mansfield Park, a whodunit by Lynn Shepherd.
Based on Jane Austen’s classic novel Mansfield Park, the murder mystery re-imagines Austen’s classic story re-casting gentle and principled heroine Fanny Price as “ambitious, scheming and relentlessly focused”, while anti-heroine Mary Crawford “suffers great indignities from her mean neighbour”.
And now, a bit of self hype by the publisher.
Simon Petherick, managing director of Beautiful Books, described the book as “fantastic” and “tremendous fun”. He added: “The really good thing about it is that linguistically, it’s very accurate, and she picks up on all the key themes that appeared in the original . . . But whereas Fanny is quite a pain in the arse in Austen’s version, Lynn’s Fanny is an outrageous gold-digger.”
From what we can gather, this is an original manuscript and not a true mash-up inserting new bits into Jane Austen’s original text like we saw in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Calling Fanny Price a pain in the arse is a bit crude, but honestly, we are just relieved that there are no monster or alien invasions in it.
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