Your online source for Jane Austen and her legacy
From the desk of Joanna Go: The moment I opened Jane’s Fame, the catchy titles of certain chapters – Praise and Pewter, Canon and Canonisation, Jane AustenTM hooked me and I knew I was in for a ride. I was not disappointed. Claire Harman’s new biography of Jane Austen is an engaging and brave account... Continue Reading →
From the desk of Laurel Ann Nattress: Last unfinished works by acclaimed novelist have an irresistible attraction. Inevitably someone will want to complete them. Psychologically we all want closure in our own lives as well as our literature. I readily admit when I first read Sanditon, Jane Austen’s last unfinished novel, and came to the... Continue Reading →
From the desk of Laurel Ann Nattress:Â On the 27th of January, 1817 Jane Austen began work on a novel that is now known as Sanditon. It was never completed. Her declining health robbed her of what she dearly loved most, writing, and on the 18th of March 1817 after penning 22,000 words she wrote... Continue Reading →
From the desk of Laurel Ann Nattress: “One abandoned and the other uncompleted.” The Watsons and Sanditon may be fragments in Jane Austen’s literary canon, but they still deserve due deference. Composed over a decade apart in 1803-4 and 1817, each represents Austen’s desire to continue writing during two challenging times in her life. Written... Continue Reading →
It is a truth universally acknowledged that in Carrie Bebris’ clever Jane Austen inspired mysteries, whenever Mr. and Mrs. Darcy embarks on a carriage journey across England they are sure to end up investigating a murder in a country village inhabited by someone or other of Jane Austen’s characters from one of her novels. This... 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 and... 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, historical Regency romance and detective fiction novels. Â 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... Continue Reading →
Persuasion, Jane Austen’s last completed novel was written between 1815 and 1816, with final chapter revisions in August of that year. Published posthumously in late 1817 with her earlier work Northanger Abbey, each of the novels represents the alpha and omega of her writing career. Even though they are divergent in tone and topic, they each... Continue Reading →
Northanger Abbey is the exuberant lesser-known child of Jane Austen’s oeuvre. Even though it was her first novel to be completed and sold in 1803, much to Austen’s bemusement it was never published and languished with Crosby & Co for thirteen years until she bought it back for the ten pounds that the publisher had... Continue Reading →
A nineteenth-century exotic locale, a handsome officer and a feisty heroine make for archetypical romantic fare, but Lauren Willig’s new novel The Betrayal of the Blood Lily is anything BUT a conventional bodice ripper embellished with historical detail. In her sixth novel in her “Pink Carnation” series, Willig exhibits once again that she is an... Continue Reading →
From the desk of Laurel Ann Nattress: Emma, Jane Austen’s fourth novel was published in 1815 and dedicated to the Prince Regent, later King George IV. The dedication was a request by the Prince and not Austen's idea. She privately abhorred the Regent for his treatment of his wife Princess Caroline, and his abhorrent dissipated... Continue Reading →
A campy, madcap adventure story, Mr. Darcy’s Great Escape is Marsha Altman’s third book, in her Pride and Prejudice Continues series. The year is 1812, seven years after Elizabeth Bennet and her devoted sister Jane married Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley respectively, and the families are all returning to Longbourn for the wedding of Kitty Bennet, daughter number four. Within the first 100 pages, Elizabeth Darcy finds herself immersed in the intrigues of the Napoleonic War as she races across the continent to the rescue of Mr. Darcy, who has become imprisoned in a medieval cell in Transylvania! Unbelievable? Quite, but hang on . . . there’s more.
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