September - 2019

Journalist and author

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Keeping up with the Janeites

Sep 30, 2019

Keeping up with the Janeites

I don’t speak Kardashian. I have trouble distinguishing among the K-named females of the clan, disentangling the one who married Kanye West from the one whose jewels were stolen in Paris from the one who divorced about ten minutes after staging a nationally televised wedding. (What? That’s all the same one? Seriously?) Now, however, I finally know something useful about at least one of the Weird Sisters: Kourtney Kardashian, it seems, is an Austen reader. Or so the eldest Kar

Janeite on the Potomac, Part II

Sep 26, 2019

Janeite on the Potomac, Part II

Bipartisanship is sadly rare in Washington these days, so it’s refreshing to find one instance of agreement across the aisle, even in these polarized times. Hot on the heels of the news that First Daughter Ivanka Trump is (possibly) a Janeite comes word that Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a leading contender for the Democratic Presidential nomination, is also an Austen fan. “In Iowa City, Elizabeth Warren is asked her favorite book,” New York Times politics reporter

A Jane Austen Christmas mystery

Sep 23, 2019

A Jane Austen Christmas mystery

See that headline? The one right above this blog post? I’m kind of proud of it. Doesn’t it totally sound like it could be the title of a new Hallmark Christmas movie? Which is appropriate, since the mystery in question concerns the strange disappearance of a Jane Austen-themed movie from the Hallmark Channel’s “Countdown to Christmas” schedule. “Countdown to Christmas,” now in its tenth year, is Hallmark’s annual saccharine-laced marathon of cookie-baking, hot-chocolate-dri

By the seaside

Sep 19, 2019

By the seaside

A few weeks ago, as ITV began airing a much-hyped miniseries based on Sanditon, the seaside novel Jane Austen left unfinished at her death, a painter commissioned by the broadcaster started work on a giant billboard promoting the series (see under: much-hyped). Artist David Downes finished the job earlier this month, and from the photo I’ve seen, the completed painting, on a twelve-meter-wide billboard in the British seaside town of Bournemouth, looks rather lovely: a green a

Pictures at an exhibition

Sep 16, 2019

Pictures at an exhibition

Is Michelle Obama a Janeite? As far as I’m aware, no documentation exists to settle the question either way. But circumstantial evidence now suggests that the artist who painted Michelle Obama’s official portrait may indeed be One of Us. Amy Sherald, whose strikingly beautiful 2018 painting of the former First Lady hangs in the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, has just opened a solo exhibition in New York. And two of the eight portraits on display are named after lin

Among the Janeites, via First Impressions

Sep 12, 2019

Among the Janeites, via First Impressions

Writing is a solitary job, so it’s always satisfying to discover that someone out there has read – even liked! – your words. So imagine my delight when Kristin and Maggie, hosts of the First Impressions podcast (subtitle: “Why All the Austen Haters Are Wrong”), chose to feature my book Among the Janeites on their most recent episode. The First Impressions team has been producing sixty- to ninety-minute podcasts roughly once or twice a month since December 2015, discussing Aus

On this day in 1814. . .

Sep 9, 2019

On this day in 1814. . .

Forty-seventh in an occasional series of excerpts from Jane Austen's letters. Jane Austen’s letters, with their unpolished emphasis on the minutiae of daily life, don’t offer the reader as many gems as her novels do. Still, a few sentences here and there have earned deserved immortality among Janeites, and one of those memorable passages comes in the letter Austen began writing exactly 205 years ago today (#107 in Deirdre Le Faye’s standard edition of Austen’s correspondence)

Hunting for Easter eggs

Sep 5, 2019

Hunting for Easter eggs

Two episodes of the much-hyped TV adaptation of Sanditon, the novel Jane Austen left unfinished at her death, have aired in Britain over the past eleven days, and reviews so far are. . . mixed. At best. Words like “cringey” and “dull” have been employed (as, to be fair, have “refreshingly loose.”) One scene has been compared to “a school video designed for 10-year-olds.” We Americans won’t get to decide for ourselves until January 12, when the show launches on PBS’ Masterpiec

A Janeite in STEM

Sep 2, 2019

A Janeite in STEM

All the talk these days about the decline of the humanities can be pretty depressing for us English-major types, who persist in believing that literature and the arts are just as important as computers and . . . numbers and . . . stuff. No STEM without flowers! (OK, maybe another slogan. Suggestions welcome.) In that context, it’s refreshing to learn that the mechanical engineer recently named the first female chancellor of the Arizona campus of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical Univ