April - 2021

Journalist and author

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Virtual Austenland

Apr 29

Virtual Austenland

We all hope our offscreen lives will soon resume, but in the meantime, our gatherings remain virtual. For Janeites, that’s meant online conferences sponsored by organizations from Australia to England, Arizona to New Jersey. And this weekend, it means Virtual Jane Con, the second annual iteration of a free-form Austen conference created by and for fans. The conference, which kicks off tomorrow and runs through Sunday, features thirty events – mostly lectures, but also a panel

Upstairs, downstairs

Apr 26

Upstairs, downstairs

When Keira Knightley was cast as Elizabeth Bennet in the 2005 feature film of Pride and Prejudice, she worried that her performance would be a carbon copy of Jennifer Ehle’s in the iconic 1995 TV adaptation. “But my mom said, ‘Read the book again, and I guarantee you that you will see Elizabeth Bennet as yourself.’ And she was absolutely right,” Knightley told an interviewer. “Any woman who reads it identifies with her so closely that she sees Elizabeth Bennet as herself.” It

Costume drama

Apr 22

Costume drama

It’s Oscar night on Sunday, and even though this year will inevitably lack the red-carpet glamor of pre-pandemic times, I will avidly consume every moment of the show. A year ago, it seemed possible that the most recent big-screen Jane Austen adaptation – Autumn de Wilde’s visually striking version of Emma – would garner a fistful of nominations. But in the end, the movie settled for just two – Costume, and Makeup and Hairstyling. Ahead of the awards presentation, Emma. costu

Mr. Wickham, live

Apr 19

Mr. Wickham, live

The BBC’s iconic 1995 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice is known among Janeites by various shorthands: * There’s “the wet-shirt P&P,” for the memorable scene involving Mr. Darcy, a cool pond on a hot day, and a dampened white garment that – ahem! – clings; * There's "the Andrew Davies P&P," for the ubiquitous screenwriter famous for adding sex to the supposedly sexless Jane Austen; * There’s “the Colin Firth P&P,” for the talented British actor whose star turn as a devastatin

Cross-channel connections

Apr 15

Cross-channel connections

Jane Austen is usually thought of as a quintessentially English writer, what with all those landed estates, rural rectories, and mannerly courtships. But her family had ties to the enemy country across the Channel, and the political and intellectual radicalism of the French Revolution may have left its mark on Austen’s work. The French influence on Austen’s life and times is the subject of a two-day virtual conference coming up this weekend – “Jane Austen’s French Connection,

Strange brew

Apr 12

Strange brew

One of the many, many reasons I am glad not to live in the time of Jane Austen – right up there with the absence of antibiotics, reliable contraception, and voting rights for women – is the quality of the food. Traditional English cooking, even when employing the farm-to-table ingredients available to the Austens, is best known for its bland heaviness. (As regular blog readers will recall, I established as much a few years ago when I tried out a few recipes from The Jane Aust

All the Janes

Apr 8

All the Janes

Janeites have a curious affinity for images of Our Author – even though, as I’ve noted before, we’ll never really know what she looked like. Perhaps that explains why Austen avatars keep popping up in my Google alert: * Jane the Discreet: I’m not one of those people who feel compelled to hide spare rolls of toilet paper under adorably crocheted little covers. But if you are such a person, I suppose that crafting said cover in the image of your favorite classic English novelis

Austenian medical mystery

Apr 5

Austenian medical mystery

Jane Austen’s death is tragic, because she died at only forty-one, at the height of her artistic powers. It’s also mysterious – the year-long illness that preceded her death was essentially undiagnosed in her time, and that diagnosis is the subject of rampant speculation in ours. Since the 1960s, conventional wisdom has held that Austen probably died of Addison’s disease, a rare disorder of the adrenal glands. But more recently, alternate theories have gained currency: lympho

On this day in 1816. . .

Apr 1

On this day in 1816. . .

Sixty-second in an occasional series of excerpts from Jane Austen’s letters. From time to time, you will hear writers claim that they “never read reviews.” These people are lying. Oh, fine: Perhaps they are simply Martians whose veins are filled with liquid mercury instead of heart’s blood. Invest years of work into a project and then ignore what other people think of the result? Well, all I can say is – I can’t do it. (Not that I obsess over, say, my one-star Goodreads ratin