Your online source for Jane Austen and her legacy
From the desk of Tracy Hickman: Readers of Pride and Prejudice often compare Charlotte Lucas unfavorably with Elizabeth Bennet who bravely resists financial and familial pressure to accept a proposal from the comically inept Mr. Collins, the man who stands to inherit Longbourn upon her father’s death. While nothing but the deepest love will induce... Continue Reading →
From the desk of Sophia Rose: One of the brilliant things about modern retellings is the amusement in discovering the similarities in the characters and scenes to the original while still getting a unique flavor to the story by seeing them in a new setting. Fiona Palmer's, Matters of the Heart, a modern retelling of... Continue Reading →
From the desk of Debra E. Marvin: Author of The Longbourn Letters, Rose Servitova’s candid preface in A Completing of the Watsons intrigued me as much as the concept of someone taking on an incomplete Austen manuscript. It’s believed Miss Austen began the story around 1803, but it was no more than a partial manuscript at the... Continue Reading →
From the desk of Debbie Brown: Abigail Reynolds continues to outdo herself, to the delight of JAFF readers throughout the world. Her name is one of the most recognizable in the genre, and for good reason. She’s been providing unique ways for Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet to fall in love for over a decade.... Continue Reading →
“Fashions come and go; bad taste is timeless.” — Beau Brummell So saith the arbiter of style in the Regency era when all of Jane Austen’s books were published and she and her characters dwelled. Since fashion is mentioned sparingly in her novels how is one to know, two hundred years after the fact, what... Continue Reading →
From the desk of Debbie Brown: I need “Me” time. Frequently. My husband and I joke about my need for a “Leave Me Alone!” hat as a signal that I am NOT to be disturbed for a while. Anyone else feel this way sometimes? When the worries pile up, you feel the need to go... Continue Reading →
From the desk of Debbie Brown: Soon, All Hallow's Eve will be upon us, when restless spirits of the dead are said to roam. What better time to pick up a gothic Austenesque novel centered around an ancestral family curse that continues to claim its victims? Beware, brave readers: this tome is not for the... Continue Reading →
From the desk of Laurel Ann Nattress: Honestly, to be a fly on the dining room wall of author John Kessel when in between passing the potatoes he announced to his family that his next book would be an amalgamation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. What a mischievous rogue he... Continue Reading →
From the desk of Tracy Hickman: What can the places that Jane Austen called home tell us about the author’s life and work? In Jane Austen at Home, historian, author, and BBC presenter Lucy Worsley looks at the author’s life through the lens of Austen’s homes. As Worsley notes in the book’s introduction, “For Jane,... Continue Reading →
The late eighteenth-century is one of my favorite eras in history. England and France and America were all in turmoil—fighting with each other, and internally. While Britain tried to maintain its colonies in America, France’s people were resisting their government and the aristocrats that ruled them. The outcome in America was the defeat of British... Continue Reading →
From the desk of Tracy Hickman: The subtitle for Robert Morrison’s history of Regency Great Britain, “during which Jane Austen writes, Napoleon fights, Byron makes love, and Britain becomes modern,” hints at the variety and diversity within its pages. In contrast to Jane Austen’s tightly focused fiction, famously self-described as “three or four families in... Continue Reading →
From the desk of Laurel Ann Nattress: Sanditon, Jane Austen’s last unfinished novel is in the news. A new TV adaptation and continuation of the same name premiered in the UK on ITV on August 25, 2019. The new eight-part series was written by Andrew Davies (Pride and Prejudice 1995) and will be shown on... Continue Reading →
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