Had 2020 not been so – well, 2020-ish – throngs of happy Janeites from across the globe would have staggered home earlier this month from the annual Jane Austen Festival in Bath, England, phones overflowing with photos of fellow revelers in Regency costume. Instead, Austen fans must continue to make do with virtual celebrations--even in Bath, where the venerable Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution in England is sponsoring this week’s “Rediscovering Jane Austen” ser

Twenty-five years ago today, the BBC’s beloved adaptation of Pride and Prejudice began airing on UK TV. By the time the show made its way to American airwaves a few months later, it was already a phenomenon. And now it’s dessert. Earlier this month, the British TV channel Drama launched its latest “Jane Austen Season” – i.e., three Sunday-night screenings of popular Austen adaptations -- by commissioning a six-foot-high sponge-cake likeness of Colin Firth’s Mr. Darcy and plan

We Janeites love our Jane Austen movies. Can’t get enough of ‘em! Want more! And more! Or so you’d conclude from recent news: * Plans for a big-screen Persuasion, word of which first surfaced last month, seem to be proceeding nicely: The Australian actress Sarah Snook, recently nominated for an Emmy for the HBO business dramedy Succession, has reportedly been cast as Anne Elliot. There’s plenty of time for the project to fall apart – remember that big-screen Sanditon, starrin

In vain have I struggled. It will not do. Even though it bears no relation to anything else going on in Jane Austen World, you must allow me to tell you about the rooster. See, a couple of months ago, I happened across a delightful post on the Facebook page of Columbia State Historic Park, a preserved Gold Rush town in Northern California. As you can see, the photo shows a handsome barred rooster with an impressive red comb and wattle, and the caption reads, “Columbia’s unoff

Fifty-sixth in an occasional series of excerpts from Jane Austen's letters. The letter that the 28-year-old Jane Austen wrote to her sister, Cassandra, exactly 216 years ago today (#39 in Deirdre Le Faye’s standard edition of Austen’s correspondence) is dated from Lyme, where the Austen family was spending a late-summer holiday. For fans of Austen’s novels, that dateline, and the echoes of Persuasion that it summons, may be the most notable thing about this letter: Although w

When valuable editions of Jane Austen’s novels come up for auction, the selling point is usually something about the books themselves: first editions, complete sets, original bindings. Back in February, blog readers will recall, a well-heeled collector paid more than $240,000 for a complete set of Austen first editions offered by a New York auction house. (Sigh. Jealous much?) In an online auction of Austen editions that is ongoing right now, however, the selling point is not

Those of us who set ourselves up as arbiters of correctness in matters of Jane Austen quotation never run short of opportunities to criticize. All over the internet, people are bobbling Austen’s words, or attributing quotes from Austen movies to Austen novels, or wrenching accurate quotes out of context, thereby distorting their meaning. But if you’re ready to criticize, you must also be ready to praise. And thus it is that I tip my hat to one Zisilia Alvsa, whom the self-hel

Dispiriting as the last six months have been, Janeites have encountered some notable silver linings in the gloomy cloud cover. We’ve been treated to several virtual Jane Austen festivals, an online production of Laura Wade’s acclaimed adaptation of The Watsons, even a Zoom-enabled pub quiz. Next up is Pride and Prejudice: A Virtual Play, produced by Chicago’s Lifeline Theatre, a thirty-eight-year old company that specializes in theatrical adaptations of literary works. Lifeli