Your online source for Jane Austen and her legacy
Guest review by Aarti of Book Lust The Black Moth was Georgette Heyer's first novel, written while she was a teenager. She uses updated versions of some of the characters in her more popular novel These Old Shades. Set in mid-1700's England, an earl has passed away, and his eldest son must be found to... Continue Reading →
From the desk of Laurel Ann Nattress:Â During her prolific fifty-three year writing career, British author Georgette Heyer (1902-1974) wrote fifty-six historical fiction, Regency romance and detective fiction novels. She was a pioneer in Regency romance, and is generally attributed by many for establishing the sub-genre that is flourishing today. Stylish, witty and historically accurate,... Continue Reading →
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... Continue Reading →
What qualifies a story as a retelling of a Jane Austen novel? Reverent adherence to Austen’s plot line? Faithful interpretation of characterization? Emulation of her prose style? I asked myself these questions several times while reading Jenni James’ new novel Northanger Alibi, the first book in her Austen Diaries series of contemporary counterparts to Austen’s... Continue Reading →
From the desk of Christina Boyd: I was anxious to read The Man Who Loved Pride & Prejudice: A Modern Love Story with a Jane Austen Twist, by Abigail Reynolds as I have been a fan of her Pemberley Variations series for a few years, own all her other commercially published and self-published books and... Continue Reading →
“Revolution had changed the world and fashion had dressed it accordingly.” Sarah Jane Downing It is hard for me not to think of a Jane Austen movie adaptation and not remember how fashion influenced my enjoyment of the film. Some of my most vivid memories are of Elizabeth Bennet walking the verdant countryside in her... Continue Reading →
From the desk of Laurel Ann Nattress:Â There are several biographies in print on Jane Austen (1775-1817) revealing her life, family, and her inspiration to become a writer. Two very famous books come to mind: Jane Austen: A Life by Claire Tomalin (1998) and oddly the same title published in the same year by David... 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 →
If you have not heard about the book Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, you must be from another planet. The break-out best seller of 2009 (and soon to be a major motion picture starring Natalie Portman) took the publishing industry quite unawares making its co-author Seth Grahame-Smith a hot property, oodles of publicity for its... 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 →
Did you know that Georgette Heyer is British author and literary critic Margaret Drabble’s favorite historical novelist? I know! High praise from an author who has written eighteen novels, introductions to all of Jane Austen’s major and minor works, been awarded a Doctorate in Letters from Cambridge University and the CBE and DBE by the... Continue Reading →
In The Other Mr. Darcy, last year’s debut Austenesque novel by Monica Fairview we were introduced to Fitzwilliam Darcy’s American cousin Robert Darcy. Now the story continues with The Darcy Cousins, a Pride and Prejudice sequel to a sequel when his two younger siblings Clarissa and Frederick Darcy arrive from Boston and join their brother... Continue Reading →
Austenprose