Your online source for Jane Austen and her legacy
From the desk of Laurel Ann Nattress: Big news this week in Austenland! The BBC announced a new ten-part drama series adapted from Janice Hadlow’s bestselling novel, The Other Bennet Sister. The new period drama is inspired by Mary Bennet, one of Jane Austen’s most unassuming and puzzling characters from Pride and Prejudice. Mary is... Continue Reading →
From the desk of Laurel Ann Nattress: We are coming up on a significant anniversary next year in the Jane Austen film adaptation world. Sense and Sensibility (1995) will be thirty—an age in Austen’s Regency world when unmarried women were considered old maids, unworthy of serious consideration on the marriage market. Not so with this... Continue Reading →
From the desk of Laurel Ann Nattress: For those of us who are fans of Jane Austen movie adaptations and binged the Netflix mega-hit Bridgerton, the announcement of a movie adaptation of Suzanne Allain’s popular Regency-era novel, Mr. Malcolm’s List, was the best news this period drama lover could receive. While our anticipation ran high,... Continue Reading →
From the desk of Laurel Ann Nattress: What do we know about Jane Austen’s love life? Very little. The information that survives is found in her personal letters and from family recollections. Apart from the one proposal by Harris Bigg-Wither, no other known romances or love affairs were documented. For someone who wrote so perceptively... Continue Reading →
The long wait is almost over. The two part BBC/PBS mini-series of P. D. James' bestselling novel, Death Comes to Pemberley, will premiere on Masterpiece Mystery in one week on Sunday, October 26 at 9pm (check your local listing) and concludes on the following Sunday, November 2. To get you warmed up for this intriguing... Continue Reading →
This 1981 BBC seven-part miniseries of Sense and Sensibility is a solid but flawed adaptation of Jane Austen’s masterpiece. In my mind, the character of Marianne Dashwood is always the benchmark for a superior adaptation. She is a complicated creature driven by emotion and racked with vulnerability, and if the actress portraying Jane Austen’s most... Continue Reading →
From the desk of Helen Wilkinson of P and P Tours: Actress Emma Thompson recalls her time filming Sense & Sensibility for the 1995 movie directed by Ang Lee, “The house representing Barton Cottage is one of the most beautiful spots we’ve ever seen. It took the curse off a six-day week.” The film location... Continue Reading →
I was quite excited when the news hit the blogosphere that the elusive 1971 mini-series of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility was being resurrected from the vaults and reissued by the BBC. It originally aired in the UK, but had never jumped the pond until this re-issue. Now, I think I know why. If you... Continue Reading →
From the desk of Laurel Ann Nattress:Â Take a controversial classic novel, mix in a liberal filmmaker's re-interpretation, amplify the slavery subtext, add in lesbianism and incest, and presto! you have Mansfield Park (1999), writer-director Patricia Rozema's provocative adaptation of Jane Austen's 1814 novel. I am not exaggerating when I say that Jane Austen's fans... Continue Reading →
"I, and only I, knew your heart and its sorrows; yet, to what did it influence me? -- not to any compassion that could benefit you or myself. -- Your example was before me: but to what avail? -- Was I more considerate of you and your comfort? Did I imitate your forbearance, or lessen... Continue Reading →
 Marianne began now to perceive that the desperation which had seized her at sixteen and a half, of ever seeing a man who could satisfy her ideas of perfection, had been rash and unjustifiable. Willoughby was all that her fancy had delineated in that unhappy hour and in every brighter period, as capable of... Continue Reading →
