July - 2020

Journalist and author

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Jane talks back

Jul 30, 2020

Jane talks back

Jane Austen lived a very long time ago, in a world whose gender roles, social conditions, and technological context are largely alien to us. It’s likely that our world would seem equally incomprehensible to her. But that hasn’t prevented any number of writers from regaling us with accounts of What Jane Would Say about. . . modern dating, or wellness regimens, or job-hunting. Of course, all these people were just putting words in her mouth, since poor Jane couldn’t speak for h

Ruins

Jul 27, 2020

Ruins

Tom Lefroy’s house is crumbling away. To Janeites, this may seem poetic justice for the young Irishman who danced and flirted with the twenty-year-old Jane Austen in the winter of 1795-6. If, as some believe, he broke her heart by bowing to family pressure to cut short his budding love affair with a not-rich girl, then presumably we must hate him: How dare anyone hurt Our Jane? So perhaps it’s karma that Carrigglas, the nineteenth-century mansion in County Longford where Lefr

Cash for cream teas and champagne

Jul 23, 2020

Cash for cream teas and champagne

The havoc that pandemic lockdown has wreaked on an array of arts and cultural organizations is old news by now. Janeites have seen a number of beloved annual events canceled, postponed, or moved online, and last month, the premier Austen site – Jane Austen’s House, aka Chawton Cottage, the home in Hampshire, England, where the author spent the last eight years of her life and wrote or revised all six of her completed novels – made a desperate crowdfunding appeal to stave off

Dining out

Jul 20, 2020

Dining out

I don’t know about you, but I miss dinner parties. You remember dinner parties: those occasions on which you gathered with friends – indoors! – to share cooked food while sitting close together, without facial coverings. Sigh. Dinner parties will be back one of these days, I trust. In the meantime, there’s “Dining with Mr. Darcy,” an online lecture promising “a culinary romp through Georgian and Regency food history.” The Zoom webinar, delivered by writer and food historian C

Reckoning with the past

Jul 16, 2020

Reckoning with the past

By now, it’s no surprise to find Jane Austen’s name surfacing in discussions of Britain’s unsavory imperial history: The debate over the significance of Austen’s glancing references to West Indian slavery has raged for decades. Nor should it be a surprise to see Austen press-ganged into service, however unfairly, as a symbol of uncritical nostalgia for nineteenth-century country house life. Still, I couldn’t help bristling when her name surfaced in a recent Guardian story ab

Passing Go

Jul 13, 2020

Passing Go

In case you were wondering how high the bar for Janeite gift-giving could be set, wonder no longer: Josh Jordan, a twenty-nine-year-old graphic designer from the UK, has bested the competition so thoroughly that everyone else might as well go home. Jordan’s girlfriend of two years, Sophie Jackson, is such a rabid Janeite that a few years ago, she and a friend hosted a podcast, The Bennet Edit, that featured discussion of virtually every screen adaptation of Pride and Prejudic

Festival weekend

Jul 10, 2020

Festival weekend

Just a reminder that this weekend will be an exciting one for Janeites: the online version of the popular Jane Austen Festival–held, in virus-free years, in Louisville, Kentucky--runs from tonight through Sunday. I’ve got a dog in this fight, since I will be on the program twice: --Tonight at 7 pm (Eastern), I’ll be speaking on the history and contemporary significance of Jane Austen fanfiction, with a live Q&A session to follow the pre-recorded talk. --Tomorrow at noon (East

Happy birthday, JAS

Jul 9, 2020

Happy birthday, JAS

A thousand years ago – or, actually, back in January – the big Janeite news of 2020 was shaping up to be the eightieth anniversary of the founding of the UK’s Jane Austen Society, the world’s first official Austen fan club. Since then, of course, we’ve had to contend with the virus-induced closings of major Austen sites, along with concomitant fiscal pressures; and the virus-impelled cancelations of Austen events, partly mitigated by new online programming designed to fill th

The Watsons, reborn

Jul 6, 2020

The Watsons, reborn

Among the Janeite casualties of pandemic lockdown was the planned West End production of The Watsons, Laura Wade’s much-praised adaptation of Jane Austen’s unfinished novel. The show earned great reviews during runs at a provincial British theater in 2018 and a small London venue last fall, and its transfer to the British equivalent of Broadway had been set for May through September of this year. Alas. But! Now comes word that a serialized, professional, Zoom-enabled reading

Back to the gardens

Jul 2, 2020

Back to the gardens

The world continues to take baby steps toward reopening after quarantine. For Janeites, the latest encouraging sign is that the gardens of Chawton House will reopen this weekend. Like everything else in Britain, Chawton House – the mansion in Hampshire, England, once owned by Jane Austen’s brother -- has been shut down since March, when the UK government instituted a lockdown to reduce the spread of coronavirus. But now the government is (controversially) easing lockdown cond