Category: Jane Austen in the News

Roundup of Pride and Prejudice Turning 200 and other Amusements

The Kiss, by Janet Taylor

Illustration of The Kiss, from a note card by Janet Taylor

This has been a heady week of Pride and Prejudice blitz from the media and bloggers celebrating the 200th anniversary of its publication on Monday, January 28, 2013. There have been so many articles, interviews, read-a-thons, television news segments, and Internet chat about Jane Austen’s “darling child” that even this confessed Austen obsessive is overwhelmed and unable to keep up with all of the festivities.  I was shocked to hear another Austenesque author tell me that she was sick of it. “What?” I exclaimed incredulously. “No! This is great for Jane’s fame and for authors,” I told her defensively.  She shrugged and agreed.

It is very gratifying to me to see my favorite author so amply admired by so many and honored by scholars and the media. In a world filled with so much uncertainty and unrest, Pride and Prejudice is indeed a truth universally acknowledged. I think it will be around and venerated as long as people value pithy dialogue, intelligent, spunky heroines, honorable heroes, and compelling love stories. If I had to narrow down why it is my favorite novel, I would say because it is such a chameleon: after repeated annual readings over thirty plus years, I always come to the final passage with some new insight and a calming satisfaction that some things in life are constant.

Here is my roundup of favorite #PandP200 articles:

Jane Odiwe, BBC interview (2013)

The enduring appeal of Pride and Prejudice

Our friend and Jane Austen Made Me Do It short story contributor Jane Odiwe is interviewed by the BBC. Jane, the author of four Austen-inspired novels, and numerous illustrations of her favorite Austen characters and scenes, admits to being obsessed with Jane Austen to the world. Brave, Jane. We love you!

Austen Power

“To mark the 200th anniversary of Pride and Prejudice, novelists, moviemakers and scholars are releasing a flood of new homages to cash in on the bottomless appetite for all things Austen.” The Wall Street Journal interviews Austen authors Sharon Lathan and Paula Byrne, publishers Oxford University Press, HarperFiction and Sourcebooks, scholars Juliette Wells and Claudia Johnson, and fan Meredith Esparza for this extensive article about Austen’s enduring appeal. Wowza! It got a full page spread in the print edition. Go #TeamJane!

200 Years of Pride and Prejudice Book Design

There are thousands of editions of P&P (it seems) and we love to discover cover designs, old and new. This article in the The Atlantic Wire shares many of the good, the bad, and the horrid, including ones that I included in a post My Top Ten Pride and Prejudice Covers that I wrote in 2010. I guess I was ahead of the trend.

Colin Firth dripping wet with sex as Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice (1995)

Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice: Darcy is still the ultimate sex symbol

Like this is a surprise? The Telegraph (UK newspaper) offers up this cream puff of a piece on a truth already universally acknowledged by any Janeite worth their weight in syllabub. *yawn* We still like seeing wet shirt Darcy and enjoyed the history of his on screen persona thank you very much!

Why Jane Austen’s Pride And Prejudice still has appeal 200 years on

Professor Karen O’Brien, Austen expert, Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Education) and Professor of English Literature at the University of Birmingham, explains why Pride and Prejudice’s appeal has spanned two centuries – and is still growing.

Pride and Prejudice is an enduring classic because it is really about the human instinct to pursue happiness, to insist that happiness is something we are all entitled to (no matter what the Lady Catherine de Bourghs of this world tell us) and to believe that those who are generous, affectionate and self-aware stand the best chance of becoming happy.

The love story is fundamentally about that path to self-awareness, and how a genuinely intimate relationship is a mutual journey in which we come to know ourselves, each other and the world.

We are reminded of Austen’s rub of Birmingham in Emma. I think they have forgiven her.

A Tweet Universally Acknowledged

How would the Netherfield ball play out on Twitter? Austenesque author Lynn Shepherd’s delightful imaginings of a Twitter feed if the Bennet girls could tweet and Darcy could DM. Even Mr. Collins has his say. How he condensed his flowery soliloquies down to 140 characters is quite a feat.

Chatsworth House, Derbyshire, England

Following in Jane Austen’s Footsteps: Discover Novelist’s England

A video look at Chatsworth House, the famous grand manor in Derbyshire that many believe was Jane Austen’s inspiration for Pemberley, Mr. Darcy’s estate in Pride and Prejudice. Ooo, we are always awed by its magnificence and are reminded of this passage from chapter 43:

Elizabeth’s mind was too full for conversation, but she saw and admired every remarkable spot and point of view. They gradually ascended for half a mile, and then found themselves at the top of a considerable eminence, where the wood ceased, and the eye was instantly caught by Pemberley House, situated on the opposite side of a valley, into which the road with some abruptness wound. It was a large, handsome stone building, standing well on rising ground, and backed by a ridge of high woody hills; and in front a stream of some natural importance was swelled into greater, but without any artificial appearance. Its banks were neither formal nor falsely adorned. Elizabeth was delighted. She had never seen a place for which nature had done more, or where natural beauty had been so little counteracted by an awkward taste. They were all of them warm in their admiration; and at that moment she felt that to be mistress of Pemberley might be something!

Janeites: The curious American cult of Jane Austen

BBC News interviewed Janeites and scholars about the phenomenon of Pride and Prejudice and Jane’s fame here in America including blog mistress and author Myretta Robens of The Republic of Pemberley, professor of English Literature at Princeton University and esteemed Austen scholar Claudia L Johnson, and me. Yes, you read that correctly. ME. In our best imitation of Mr. Collins, we were very humbled that the esteemed BBC condescended to interview us on such an auspicious occasion.

Which—leads me to my own personal Pride and Prejudice 200 encounter at work on Wednesday with a non-Janeite sent on an errand by his teenage daughter.

Customer: Do you have a copy of Pride and Prejudice?
Me: *smiles* Why yes, we have several editions. Is this a gift or for yourself?
Customer: It’s for my 14-year old daughter who has never had an interest in reading classics before. She gave me this news article and asked for this book too, written by some Jane Austen cultist who lives in our hometown of Snohomish.
Me: *Nods in stunned silence. Looks at article.* Yes, I am familiar with the article and the book.
Customer: Really? What a coincidence!
Me: Monday was the bicentenary of the publication of Pride and Prejudice. It was all over the media and television. *walks customer over to Austen shelf in fiction and then to anthologies for Jane Austen Made Me Do It.
Customer: *points at cover of Jane Austen Made Me Do It* Do you know anything about this book?
Me: *pregnant pause* I do. I am the Jane Austen cultist who lives in Snohomish.
Customer: *Stares in stunned silence and then laughs loudly*
Me: *calmly smiles* I hope she enjoys both books!
Customer: *still laughing, he nods his thanks and walks away*

Happy bicentenary Pride and Prejudice!

If you would like to continue the celebration with us here at Austenprose, please join The Pride and Prejudice Bicentenary Challenge 2013. We are reading Jane Austen’s classic and many Austen-inspired sequels, viewing movie adaptations and other diverting entertainments with great giveaway prizes all year long.

Cheers,

Laurel Ann

© 2013 Laurel Ann Nattress, Austenprose

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Austen on the Block! ~ An Austen-Filled Autumn at Upcoming Auctions

Deb at Jane Austen in Vermont has an excellent blog listing upcoming Austen-related auction items. There are so many tempting offerings – if one had Lizzy Bennet’s pin money!

Jane Austen in Vermont

UPDATE: Prices realized noted in red as they become available

There are a number of Jane Austen materials coming up for auction in the next few weeks, some actually affordable! – and then some, not so much…  here are brief synopses – visit the auction house websites for more information.

This one is a bit different and an interesting addition to anyone’s Pride and Prejudice collection!

November 18, 2012. Heritage Auctions, Lot 54353. Pride and Prejudice 1939 Movie photographs:

Pride and Prejudice (MGM, 1939). Photos (16) (8″ X 10″). Drama.

Vintage gelatin silver, single weight, glossy photos. Starring Greer Garson, Laurence Olivier, Mary Boland, Edna May Oliver, Maureen O’Sullivan, Ann Rutherford, Frieda Inescort, Edmund Gwenn, Karen Morley, Heather Angel, Marsha Hunt, Bruce Lester, Edward Ashley, Melville Cooper, Marten Lamont, E.E. Clive, May Beatty, Marjorie Wood, Gia Kent. Directed by Robert Z. Leonard.

There are 14 different photos with a…

View original post 2,411 more words

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Complete Set of the 1833 Bentley Edition of The Six to be Auctioned in Dublin

Julie at Austenonly shares the news about a beautiful set of Austen novels on the block. Oh how I wish.

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Fifty Shades of Mr. Darcy

Fifty Shades of Grey, by E L James (2012)If you have not been on another planet for the last six months, then you know about Fifty Shades of Grey, by E L James. It’s the first novel in an erotic romance trilogy that has been on the best seller list since April and flying off the shelves at my Barnes & Noble. It is estimated that the series has sold over 20 million copies. The movie rights have sold too! That is a lot of cold hard cash for its debut author, who until she wrote the series as fanfiction to the popular Twilight series, rewrote it and self-published, then sold the rights to Random House, was an unknown entity in the publishing world. To have a grand slam home run at your first time at bat. What are the odds? A bazillion to one?  Wild!

Popularly tagged mommy porn, or mummy porn if you live on the other side of the pond, I first heard about the series when I read a review by a fellow Austenprose writer Kimberly Denny-Ryder on her blog Reflections of a Book Addict. Kim is an ardent Austenesque reader and I value her opinion implicitly. I was duly intrigued. Follow this link to read her review of the Fifty Shades Trilogy on her blog. I think you will find it honest and amusing.

Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen and Amy Armstrong (2012)

With the astounding success of the Fifty Shades series, it was only a matter of time before other publishers jumped on the erotic bandwagon. But, imagine my surprise when I read this online article in the Daily Mail: Reader, I ravished him: Classics given a steamy Fifty Shades of Grey makeover that would make Jane Austen and the Brontes blush. It appears that a UK publisher thinks that there is a market for erotically enhanced classics:

Devotees of Jane Austen or the Bronte sisters may wish to loosen their corsets and have the smelling salts within reach.

Some of the greatest works of English literature have been controversially ‘sexed up’ for the 21st century.

Following the success of erotic novel Fifty Shades of Grey, one enterprising publisher has given classics such as Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights a bawdy makeover.

The existing texts have been interspersed with more racy scenes – some in toe-curling language that would surely have made the original authors blush.

Toe-curling language. Hm?

Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife, by Linda Berdoll (2004)This description sounds like they are following the format of the recent bestselling mash-up Pride and Prejudice and Zombies that added bone-crunching zombie action into Jane Austen’s classic text. Now it is hot romantic scenes K-Y’d in. This is new? No way. Many Austenesque authors have been doing this for years. Linda Berdoll took us behind the green baize curtain in 1999 with her spicy sequel to Pride and Prejudice, The Bar Sinister (later republished in 2004 by Sourcebooks as Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife); Abigail Reynolds has re-imagined Pride and Prejudice from many perspectives, historical and contemporary, adding amorous scenes to her popular Pemberley Variations series (eight novels with the ninth, Mr. Darcy’s Refuge next) and Woods Hole Quartet series; and Sharon Lathan’s bestselling Darcy Saga, which follows the married life of Pride and Prejudice’s Mr. Darcy and his wife Elizabeth (seven novels with the eighth, The Passions of Mr. Darcy next). Even though these three authors enhance and expand Mr. Darcy’s romantic life, they are PG-13 and tastefully tame in comparison to the two 2011 publications, Pride and Prejudice: Hidden Lusts, by Mitzi Szereto and Pride and Prejudice: The Wild and Wanton Edition by Michelle Pillow, which really break into the R for decidedly racy category.

JJ Feild as Henry Tilney in Northanger Abbey (2008)

In addition to a sexed up Pride and Prejudice, the Clandestine Classics series by Total E-Bound will offer Austen fans an erotic version of Northanger Abbey! The underdog of Austen’s oeuvre, Northanger is not as widely read as Austen’s golden child P&P, or the scholar favorite Emma, but I adore it because of its exuberant young heroine Catherine Morland and witty and urbane hero Nonparallel, Henry Tilney. Since Catherine is only seventeen in the novel, one wonders out loud if she will be left as is, or??? The wicked side of me is a bit curious to see what they will do with my fav of Austen’s heroes Henry Tilney. Yes, he even surpasses Mr. Darcy in my esteem dear readers. *sigh*

There are always mixed opinions about adding sex to Austen. Claire Siemaszkiewicz, founder of Total-E-Bound, offered her buz-bite on her series and attempted to forestall the fallout in the article in the Daily Mail:

“Readers will finally be able to read what the books could have been like if erotic romance had been acceptable in that day and age.

We recognise it’s a bold move that may have a polarising effect on readers but we’re keeping the works as close to the original classics as possible.”

Polarising effect? That’s an understatement!

*chortle*

Now Austen must amend her famous line from Mansfield Park to:

“Let other pens dwell on guilt, misery and S&M.”

I am very curious what readers think of sex in their Austen? What is acceptable and what crosses the line of decorum?

Cheers,

Laurel Ann

© 2012 Laurel Ann, Austenprose

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The Many Lovers of Miss Jane Austen Airs in the UK

The Many Lovers of Miss Jane Austen (2011) BBC

Historian and television celebrity Amanda Vickery’s documentary on the fandom of Jane Austen aired in the UK yesterday on BBC. The Many Lovers of Miss Jane Austen contains Vickery’s observations on Austen’s fame with interviews of scholars and fans.

To mark the 200th anniversary of the publication of Jane Austen’s first novel, Sense and Sensibility, Amanda Vickery explores the writer’s fluctuating popularity and the hold her fiction has on readers today. She talks to literary scholars, film directors and costumed devotees at Austen conventions to consider why the plots and characters continue to delight, amuse, console and provoke, argues that different generations see their own reflections in the stories, and watches a rare, handwritten manuscript of an unfinished Austen novel go under the hammer at Sotheby’s. Featuring contributions by Andrew Davies, Charles Spencer and Howard Jacobson.

I attended the Jane Austen Society of North America’s AGM in Fort Worth, Texas last October and had the pleasure of meeting Prof. Vickery.

Laurel Ann Nattress and Amanda Vickery at JASNA Ft. Worth (2011)

She was there with a full film crew to record many of the events during the conference including speaker Andrew Davies, the screenwriter of the A&E/BBC miniseries of Pride and Prejudice (1995) and many other Austen film adaptations, and interviews of some of the attendees. Two of my fellow Puget Sound JASNA members are featured in the documentary: Mary Laney and Kimberly Brangwin. Here’s a clip:

No news yet if The Many Lovers of Miss Jane Austen will air on North American or elsewhere, but this highly anticipated documentary is only rivaled by another BBC documentary, Jane Austen: The Unseen Portrait? which airs on the BBC on December 26th, 2011 in the UK. Geesh. Us US Janeites have to wait (or have other illegal resources) to see everything good on this side of the pond.

Martha Kearney and Prof. Paula Byren with possible Jane Austen portrait (2011

Jane Austen is one of the most celebrated writers of all time but apart from a rough sketch by her sister Cassandra, we have very little idea what she looked like. Biographer Dr Paula Byrne thinks that is about to change. She believes she has come across a possible portrait of the author, lost to the world for nearly two centuries. Can the picture stand up to forensic analysis and scrutiny by art historians and world leading Austen experts? How might it change our image of the author? And what might the portrait reveal about Jane Austen and her world? Martha Kearney seeks answers as she follows Dr Byrne on her quest.

Possible portrait of Jane Austen (2011)

Merry Christmas everyone!

Cheers,

Laurel Ann

Woodston Cottage

© 2007 – 2011 Laurel Ann Nattress, Austenprose

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On the Block! ~ A Jane Austen Portrait? (via Jane Austen in Vermont)

Another Jane Austen related item up for auction in London. We may never know if this watercolor portrait is of Jane Austen – but my Marianne-ish sensibilities want it to be so.

On the Block! ~ A Jane Austen Portrait? Christie’s Sale 8021:  Valuable Printed Books and Manuscripts 8 June 2011 London, King Street  [Jane Austen? by James Stanier Clarke] James Stanier Clarke’s Friendship Book will be auctioned off tomorrow, June 8, 2011 at Christie’s London.  Clarke was the Prince Regent’s librarian at Carlton House – he famously invited Jane Austen to visit, requested her to dedicate her next book to the Prince [Emma], and carried on a lively correspondence with A … Read More

via Jane Austen in Vermont

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Persuasions No. 32 in the Mail to JASNA Members

Vintage engraving of Farley Castle, Somersetshire, EnglandFarley Castle, Somersetshire, from the essay by Janine Barchas in Persuasions No. 32

Huzzah! An Austen Alert for JASNA (Jane Austen Society of North America) members.

Watch your mailbox this week. The new  issue of JASNA’s journal, Persuasions No. 32, has been mailed to all members. Here is the lowdown from the JASNA website:

Persuasions No. 32 features very nice essays delivered at the 2010 conference in Portland, Oregon: “Jane Austen and the Abbey: Mystery, Mayhem, and Muslin.”

The issue contains plenary essays by Juliet McMaster, on Catherine Morland’s imagination, and by Stephanie Barron, on the elements of mystery in Northanger Abbey. Other essays explore further the entanglements of mystery, mayhem, and muslin. Gillian Dow and Elaine Bander focus on Austen’s use of other fiction, French as well as English. Stephanie M. Eddleman and Kathy Justice Gentile examine Austen’s treatment of masculinity (and the mayhem it can resolve—or cause). Miriam Rheingold Fuller considers Northanger Abbey as domestic gothic while Elisabeth Lenckos sets the novel in relation to aesthetic categories of the sublime and the picturesque. Janine Barchas discovers a historical source for Austen’s fiction, and Mary Hafner Laney, Sheryl Craig, and Celia A. Easton use fashion, a monetary crisis, and the debate over clerical absenteeism to illuminate Northanger Abbey.

The Miscellany offers further delights, including an essay by the late Brian Southam on Jane Austen and the seaside. Peter W. Graham, Laurie Kaplan, Jan Fergus and Elizabeth Steele, and others range through labor, London, the juvenilia, The Watsons, Isabelle de Montolieu’s translation of Persuasion—and more! Click here to see the complete Table of Contents.

In the meantime, amazing essays from the Portland AGM and a rich Miscellany may be found in Persuasions On-Line 31.1 (published December 16, 2010).

The JASNA Persuasions journal is part of the annual membership to the society. It contains peer-reviewed essays from the speakers at each of the Annual General Meetings based on Jane Austen, her life, her novels and her contemporary influences – and just about anything else wholly connected to our esteemed authoress and the Regency and Georgian eras. It is a powerhouse of information and enjoyment, and one of the many benefits to annual membership that I look forward to.

If you are interested in learning more about JASNA and the Persuasions journal, please visit the societies website.

© 2007 – 2011 Laurel Ann Nattress, Austenprose

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Enough already with the “Jane Austen needed a man” to rescue her prose condemnations!

“There are a few Typical errors–& a ‘said he’ or a ‘said she’ would sometimes make the Dialogue more immediately clear–but ‘I do not write for such dull Elves As have not a great deal of Ingenuity themselves.'” Jane Austen in a letter to her sister Cassandra on the release of Pride and Prejudice, January 29, 1813

Jane Austen can’t spell, sucked at grammar and punctuation, and needed a man to complete her! So says Oxford scholar Kathryn Sutherland!

Hominy grits!

I was going to coldly ignore this folly and nonsense; deignfully not acknowledging its existence; but this is just the outside of enough. The media has grabbed on to Sutherland’s grandstanding publicity tripe and a full on scandal has erupted. It started on Saturday, October 23 with Richard Garner’s report in The Independent…

“Blots, crossings-out, messiness and bad grammar – Jane Austen’s manuscripts were so messy that a pro-active editor must have been responsible for the polished prose of novels such as Emma and Persuasion.

That is the conclusion of an Oxford University professor who has been studying 1,100 of the writer’s unpublished original manuscripts.

Professor Kathryn Sutherland, of the Oxford faculty of English language and literature, has come to the conclusion that an interventionist editor must have come to the rescue.”

Sutherland assumes that because Jane Austen’s later novels Emma, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion were relatively free of spelling and grammar errors that the editor who worked for her publisher fixed her mistakes and polished her manuscripts. Basically, that she needed a man to rescue her bad prose!

I would like to openly ask Kathryn Sutherland a question. Did you analyze the original manuscripts of Emma, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion published by Murray, or Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park published by Egerton to draw your conclusion? No? Gee, I wonder why? Because, they no longer exist.

What did you use? The 1,100 pages of original manuscripts mentioned in Richard Garner’s report could be her juvenilia, fragments of The Watsons and Sanditon, and the novella Lady Susan. Besides some other minor works, they are the only original Jane Austen manuscripts in existence.

We can hardly hold a brilliant author accountable for her spelling, grammar, punctuation and messiness in her juvenile writings. The Watsons and Sanditon were created in maturity, but are unfinished works in progress. Of course there would be words crossed out and untidiness. Lady Susan is the closest we can get to what Jane Austen might have presented to a publisher as a final manuscript for publication. The surviving manuscript was transcribed by the author in the early 1800’s as a “fair copy.” Would it have been the version that Jane Austen would have presented for publication? Since it was not, we shall never know.

So, as far as I can muster, Sutherland based her accusation on one line in a letter written by Austen’s publisher John Murray who mentions the “untidiness of her writing style” to his editor William Gifford (who we are not certain edited Austen’s books). Those four words have inspired this brouhaha, a damning insult to one of literature’s finest authors.

In conclusion, I would like to freely admit that I cannot spell, my grammar and punctuation suck and if I was not writing this on my helpful Microsoft Word program, there would be crossed out words and messiness. Unfortunately, that does not make me the next Jane Austen.

Shame on you Kathryn Sutherland for using a line written in confidence two hundred years ago for your cheap self-aggrandizement. Now the general public thinks Jane Austen is a sham.

Have a “nice” day, Laurel Ann

Disclaimer: No men were “ill-used” in the writing of this blog, though I would like to box a few ears of the gentlemen of the press.

Additional scuttlebutt and responses:

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Help put Jane Austen on new UK commemorative coin

The UK Royal Mint is asking for the public’s help in determining who will be the next Great Briton?

Yes gentle readers, they really care. Cast your vote to see whose face will don a commemorative coin being issued later this year.

Among the nominees is our own lovely Jane Austen who must vie for a chance to become pewter against the likes of a legendary rock star John Lennon, 16th-century explorer Sir Walter Raleigh, WWII flying ace Walter Bader and a British suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst.

Is there any doubt in your mind who I will vote for?

Since money was such a concern to Jane Austen in her lifetime, I find it quite ironic that her image could be used to promote the sale of it.

Make haste. Cast your vote by 31 July 2010. Voting is open to everyone, not just Brits.

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Sex and the Austen Girl Sneak Peek Preview

Our favorite Austen addict Laurie Viera Rigler has gone all Hollywood on us. The popular author of the best selling Austen inspired novels Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict and Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict has created a web comedy series for Bablegum.com called Sex and the Austen Girl based on her two century swapping heroines Courtney Stone and Jane Mansfield. Staring Arabella Field and Fay Masterson, here is a description of the series:

Two women who have inexplicably switched bodies, time periods, and lives — one from Regency England, the other from 21st-century Los Angeles — debate the pros and cons of life and love in today’s world vs. Jane Austen’s world. Sex and the Austen Girl is inspired by the bestselling novels by Laurie Viera Rigler: Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict and Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict.

The series premieres on May 17th, 2010. Here is a sneak peek preview to keep you laughing until then. Congrats Laurie. Can’t wait to laugh out loud!

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Announcement and an apology to my readers regarding my RSS feed

Update:

Thanks to the excellent Margaret and Crystal at the DWG (The Derbyshire Writers Guild who are also hosted  by Austen.com) for their immediate actions in contacting the domain host and convincing him to comply with my requests.  I know of this through their correspondence and not from the domain host who has not deigned to contact me directly. So Gentle Readers, I feel like free woman again and am so greatful for your outpouring of support. Huzzah!

Gentle Readers:

To all my legitimate readers of my blog through my RSS feed I thank you for your continued patronage and apologize for the change in format today from full post to summary only. The new format is not my first preference but my only immediate option. Unfortunately, the use of my posts by Austen dot com Blog without my consent has forced my hand. 

I spend considerable time and effort to create the best possible posts I can to promote the reading of Jane Austen’s original novels and her modern day interpretations. It is not my goal to make money from this blog so why should someone else profit from my efforts and skills through thievery? If this was an occasional offense I might over look it, but they have consistently used my posts for over four months on their commercial blog that is packed with Google ads and other unsuspecting news feeds on Jane Austen. They have never contributed an original post to their blog. Everything is lifted from me and news feeds. Why I am the only blog that they chose to hijack is a mystery since I am far from being the most famous or heavily visited. I have asked them politely several times to stop to no avail. I am now taking more aggressive measures. 

Please do not visit them because of this announcement. It will only make them richer. Just about everything you have seen here for the last four months you will find there, so there is no point. 

My profuse apologies to my readers who actually click through and visit me here. I’m so sorry you have to see this, but it is the only way to inform everyone. 

Cheers, Laurel Ann 

© 2010 Laurel Ann Nattress

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The Mysterious Disappearance in Lyme Regis of Miss Austen’s Head

From the desk of Laurel Ann Nattress: 

Call Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot and Mr. and Mrs. Darcy. A literary mystery is a foot in Lyme Regis. Jane Austen’s head is missing! 

Adrianne Maslen reports in the Bridport News that a stone bust representing the famous author which was the centerpiece of the Jane Austen Garden on Lyme’s seafront has vanished. The garden which is Continue reading “The Mysterious Disappearance in Lyme Regis of Miss Austen’s Head” →

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