One hundred and fifth in an occasional series  of excerpts from Jane Austen's letters.   How many marriage proposals did Jane Austen turn down?   The story of poor Harris Bigg-Wither, whose December 1802 proposal Austen accepted and then rejected the next day, is reasonably well-documented. Austen’s niece Caroline heard the story from her mother, who witnessed the aftermath, and years later, Caroline shared the details with her brother, James Edward Austen-Leigh, as he worked

Does the world need another Jane Austen podcast? Color me skeptical.   A rummage through Google and memory turned up eighteen non-fiction examples of the genre, and I doubt I found them all. There are podcasts sponsored by mainline Austen organizations, including Chawton House , Jane Austen’s House , and the Jane Austen Society of North America . There are podcasts devoted to excavating historical context , or dissecting Austen adaptations , or both . There are podcasts hoste

One hundred and second in an occasional series  of excerpts from Jane Austen's letters.   The letter Jane Austen wrote to her 23-year-old...

This week, British Janeites were treated to a new TV docudrama/literary-historical-biographical analysis/250th birthday tribute called...

More than two centuries ago, Jane Austen’s older brother Edward Knight decided to get his Kent mansion painted. As anyone who’s endured...

Jane Austen seems to have adored her older brother Francis. In the handful of letters that survive from their correspondence, she...

Cassandra Austen’s family considered her a skilled artist, but for most Janeites, her claim to artistic fame rests, uneasily, on a single...

One hundredth in an occasional series  of excerpts from Jane Austen's letters.   As we Janeites never tire of pointing out, Jane Austen...

What did Jane Austen look like? As I’ve noted before (for example, here and here ), we can’t be sure. We have only one portrait we know...

What were the precise contours of Jane Austen’s religious faith? It’s an open question, given the slenderness of the evidence: some stray...

It’s been a grand total of four weeks since I last reported on Jane Austen-related misinformation/foolishness on the internet. And...

Nothing depresses my spirits more quickly than an article promising to reveal Surprising Facts About Jane Austen.   What follows—whether...