Tag Archives: The Jane Austen Guide to Happily Ever After

Giveaway Winners Announced for The Jane Austen Guide to Happily Ever After

Posted in Critiques & Analysis, Giveaways, Jane Austen, Nonfiction by

Jane Austen Guide to Happily Ever After, by Elizabeth Kantor (2012)72 of you left comments qualifying you for a chance to win one of two copies available of The Jane Austen Guide to Happily Year After, by Elizabeth Kantor. The winners drawn at random are:

  • Kate @ Musings who left a comment on April, 03, 2012
  • RivkaBelle who left a comment on April 10, 2012

Congratulations ladies! To claim your prize, please contact me with your full name and address by April 18, 2012. Shipment to US addresses only.

A big thank you to author Elizabeth Kantor for her great guest blog, and to her publisher Regnery for offering the giveaway copies. Congrats to the winners. Enjoy!

© 2007 – 2012 Laurel Ann Nattress, Austenprose

The Jane Austen Guide to Happily Ever After, by Elizabeth Kantor – A Review

Posted in Book Reviews, Cultural Studies, Jane Austen, Nonfiction by

The Jane Austen Guide to Happily Ever After, by Elizabeth Kantor (2012)How many Wickhams, Willoughbys or Mr. Collins’ have you met before a Captain Wentworth, Mr. Knightley, or (miracle of miracles) Mr. Darcy landed on your doorstep? For the benefit of those who may not know who those gentlemen are, they are male characters in Jane Austen novels. They teach her heroines important life lessons about romance and love, and if one is paying attention, one can glean more than just the experience of reading a masterpiece of literature. Not only is Jane Austen a brilliant writer, she is a great life coach too.

We have long harbored the belief that everything you need to know about life and love is right there among the pages of Austen’s six major works. So does author Elizabeth Kantor. Her new relationship book, The Jane Austen Guide to Happily Ever After, will explain it all in an insightful and entertaining way. Even this grizzled Janeite learned more than a thing or two.

The book is broken down into sixteen lively chapters, like: What Do Women Really Want from Jane Austen?; Don’t be a Tragic Heroine; Jane Austen’s Skeleton Keys to a Man’s Potential;  or Arrange Your Own Marriage in the Most Pleasant Manner Possible. There’s even a fifteen page appendix questioning if Jane Austen novels are just entertainment or did she really intended to give us relationship advice – and eighty-four pages of numbered notes citing every source used on every page. Yes, gentle readers. Kantor has researched the heck out of this subject and it shows.

There is just so much to delight in this book that one barely knows where to begin praising it. Besides the friendly and accessible voice by its benevolent authoress, we just love the helpful format. Kantor has a lot to say in each of the chapters, but the density is broken up with insightful “Tips for Janeites” text boxes, subheadings categorizing subjects within the chapters, and a chapter summary at the end featuring three highlights: Adopt a Jane Austen Attitude; What Would Jane Austen Do?; and If We Really Want to Bring Back Jane Austen. In between there is a wealth of relationship knowledge, helpful advice, and a whole lot of fun. Connecting Jane Austen’s characters, plots and shrewd observations of human nature is just what our often befuddled twenty-first century relationship sensibilities need. Our favorite part was chapter twelve: “He Had No Intensions At All” How to Recognize Men Who Are “Just Not That into You.” Wow! We wish we had this book in our teens. *queue to every mom, aunt, or friend to buy The Jane Austen Guide to Happily Ever After for a loved one*

We had the honor of being one of the first to read an advanced copy and were immediately smitten. It was no hardship to offer this blurb for the back of the book:

“Influenced by the master of love and romance, Elizabeth Kantor’s wise, witty, and insightful book should be added to Mr. Darcy’s reading list for any truly accomplished woman. It will transform you into the heroine of your own life.”

Now…off to re-read the important bits, again.

5 out of 5 Regency Stars

The Jane Austen Guide to Happily Ever After, by Elizabeth Kantor
Regnery Publishing (2012)
Hardcover (304) pages
ISBN: 978-1596987845
NOOK: ISBN: 9781596983182
Kindle: ASIN: B007NJPVOG

© 2007 – 2012 Laurel Ann Nattress, Austenprose

The Jane Austen Guide to Happily Ever After Blog Tour with Author Elizabeth Kantor & Giveaway!

Posted in Blog Tours, Critiques & Analysis, Giveaways, Guest Blog, Jane Austen, Nonfiction by

The Jane Austen Guide to Happily Ever After, by Elizabeth Kantor (2012)Please join us today in welcoming author Elizabeth Kantor on her blog tour in celebration of the publication of The Jane Austen Guide to Happily Ever After, released today by Regnery Publishing. Elizabeth has generously shared with us some insights on her inspiration for writing the guide and offered a giveaway to two lucky readers.

The time: Nearly eight years ago.

The scene: Me, reading a Washington Post article on why women love Jane Austen.

The action: Me, yelling at the paper–“No, no, no! You’re getting it absolutely, perfectly, 180 degrees wrong. Women don’t love Jane Austen because her novels are so much like our own lives. Her world has everything we don’t have–and that we’re longing for!” (Or words to that effect.)

So I started writing an article about why women really love Jane Austen, and what we want from her, that we don’t have. Not just the gorgeous Regency dresses, and not just the beautiful grounds of Mr. Darcy’s Pemberley estate. Jane Austen heroines’ love lives have such dignity! And they seem to be so smart about men—not to mention, about what they themselves really want. Lizzy and Elinor and Emma (especially Emma) make mistakes, of course. But their whole conduct of their affairs just seems to be on a higher plane, one we wish we could get to!

As it happened, I was writing another piece at just around the same time–an article about the trials and tribulations of dating in the twenty-first century. And at some point along the way, it dawned on me: Jane Austen is the answer to all the complaints modern women have about our love lives—the solution to all the problems we have disentangling ourselves from the wrong guys, finding the right one, and getting to happily ever after. Her heroines follow rules that have gotten lost in the mists of time, kind of like “the Rules”—if you remember that self-help book from back in the ’90s—only they’re not tricks for manipulating men, they’re fundamental principles of relationships, based in Jane Austen’s keen insights into human nature.

So I started working on a book that would distill Jane Austen’s wisdom and apply it to modern love lives. In the process, several things became clear. As I read more first-person accounts of “modern mating rituals,” it became obvious that an awful lot of women (and men, too!) are really unhappy—bitter, angry, and distrustful of the opposite sex—because of how their love lives are going. And as I continued to read and reread Jane Austen over those eight years, it became increasingly clear that she understood a lot of important things that modern women simply don’t know—so that if I could only find a way to help women today apply her principles to their lives, they might start getting very different results from the ones that were making so many of them so unhappy. Continue reading →