A Closer Look at Georgette Heyer
Article by Allison Thompson
I picked up Pride and Prejudice at age 14—and almost immediately put it down again as too boring and hard to understand! (I clearly have changed my mind since then.) Instead of Austen my real introduction to the Regency period was through the novels of the incomparable Georgette Heyer (1902-1974). Her novels were romantic and even sensual, in the writer’s meaning of being filled with concrete textures of smells, tastes and sounds and other details of life in Regency England. They charmed me at 14 and they charm me still.
Austen’s novels have survived so well and lend themselves so easily to new incarnations in part because there is little detail. There are certainly background nuances that, if you understand them, add so much more to your reading of Austen (as our Esteem’d Editrix showed us in her recent article on carriages). But you don’t have to know your phaeton from your landau to enjoy Austen. Similarly, she gives us little detail about her character’s physical appearance, leaving plenty of scope for the imagination. Read more…
Ten Thousand A Year: The Untold Story
Seen on the public roadway:
Could it be that the fabulous Darcy fortune comes from…*gasp*…trade???
Thanks to the MANY, MANY Alert Janeites who sent us the link to this very amusing YouTube video of Jane Austen’s Fight Club:
Now, THIS is how you do a mash-up. Take the funny idea and KEEP IT SHORT. AND THEN STOP.
“How’s that going for you? Being clever?”
“Splendidly!”
HA HA HA HA HAAAAAA!
Thanks to all the Alert Janeites who made this the true definition of a viral video *takes deep breath*: Danielle, Amelia, Tasha, Mackenzie, Maria L., Fine-eyed Elizabeth, Lisa, and John!
Vote for Jane!
The Royal Mint is holding a vote to decide who is the next “Great Briton” to have his or her face commemorated on a coin. Jane Austen is one of the choices, so vote early and often! How hilariously and deliciously ironic is it to have Jane Austen, whose plots (and life) hinged so much on “pewter,” on a coin? C’mon, you only have till July 31, so go vote!
For those of you who are wavering between Jane and John Lennon, remember that John sent back his MBE so it’s doubtful he would have wanted to be on a coin. VOTE FOR JANE!
Can Mr. Darcy ever be rude enough?
The Los Angeles Times’ Daily Mirror blog takes a look at P&P 1940.
How can you possibly go wrong with Laurence Olivier as Mr. Darcy? The sad truth is that you can. Mr. Darcy isn’t hard to get right, in my opinion — all he has to do is be terribly rude — but most adaptations of “Pride and Prejudice” balk at having the leading man be terribly rude.
Oh, for a truly cranky Cranky McJerkpants! Really, he’s kind of a jerk for the first half of the movie. We’ve never been on board with the “shy Darcy” thing. He’s not a bit awkward or shy. He’s just a jerk. He even admits it at the end.
have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle. As a child I was taught what was right, but I was not taught to correct my temper. I was given good principles, but left to follow them in pride and conceit. Unfortunately an only son (for many years an only child), I was spoilt by my parents, who, though good themselves (my father, particularly, all that was benevolent and amiable), allowed, encouraged, almost taught me to be selfish and overbearing; to care for none beyond my own family circle; to think meanly of all the rest of the world; to wish at least to think meanly of their sense and worth compared with my own. Such I was, from eight to eight and twenty; and such I might still have been but for you, dearest, loveliest Elizabeth! What do I not owe you! You taught me a lesson, hard indeed at first, but most advantageous. By you, I was properly humbled.
That “dearest, loveliest Elizabeth” makes up for a lot. A LOT. 
That being said, we agree with the writer that P&P 1940 is flawed but fun.
Forgive lack of recent posting
Real life interferes once again. In the meantime, enjoy a link from Alert Janeite David, who found a link to an iPad-ready edition of P&P. The blog post seems to have fed the description (which is fine on Amazon) though a translator and then back to English again. We were, however, especially amused by this comment:
Please, this was an utterly unconvincing and boring novel. If it wa written today it would be internationally acclaimed for being a dummed down soap opera. Unfortunately, having been composed in, what, the 1830s, it has become a period drama style romance novel, where instead of foreplay, they have to bow and curtsy and everything. Althought this may appeal to worthless romantics, it will not perform well to the MTV generation. The movie starred Hugh Grant. Please………
How many things can one A. Nonny Mouse get wrong in one blog comment? And we’re not even talking about the typos.
Enjoy, and with luck regular service will resume tonight. Feel free to take this as an open thread. Let us know what’s going on in your patch of Janeiteville.
Alert Janeite Lisa G. sent us a link to a post at Jezebel deconstructing a recent episode of the Glenn Beck Show in which he mentions Jane Austen, and not in a complimentary way.
Now, we know that Janeiteville is a really big tent with a remarkable cross-section of people of all backgrounds. We’re sure some of our readers are big fans of Glenn Beck, and we are not here to comment upon that. We are only here to respond to the comments about her work that he makes in this particular program (and we beg our Gentle Readers to do the same).
In the second video clip, Mr. Beck says, while displaying some odd body language that looks like he wants to strangle someone:
You think of um, movies, from, you know, like those stupid bonnet movies, that, what’s her name, Emma Thompson is always in, those awful, you know, OOOOOOOHHHHHHH, Jane Austen, ugh, but anyway–sorry ladies–tortuous! But you see that, and they’re always so prim and proper, ‘oh, I don’t know if the captain will come home this week,’ and finger sandwiches, and that’s it.
Um, what? *hefts Cluebat of Janeite Righteousness* For a program that was given to an entirely female audience, this does not seem to be the way to go about winning friends amongst the Janeites; and it does not seem to be the way to win confidence from one’s audience, by belittling their entertainment choices and by belittling the work of a woman who did not take the view that many of her generation took–marriage with the first eligible man who comes along being “the only honourable provision for well-educated young women of small fortune”–and instead courageously sells her work and carves out a small living in a society that did not value fiction overmuch, especially that written by women. And we’re still reading it two hundred years later, which should tell you, if you’re paying attention, that it’s more than bonnets and finger sandwiches.
Do we have to bring out the line from Miss Austen Regrets again? “If that’s what you think Aunt Jane’s books are about, then you need to read them again.” Not that it appears that Mr. Beck has ever read them in the first place.
As far as “revisionism” in which 20th century “Marxists” purged history of women’s contributions, Catherine Morland has something to say about history books:
“Yes, I am fond of history.”
“I wish I were too. I read it a little as a duty, but it tells me nothing that does not either vex or weary me. The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars or pestilences, in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all — it is very tiresome: and yet I often think it odd that it should be so dull, for a great deal of it must be invention. The speeches that are put into the heroes’ mouths, their thoughts and designs – the chief of all this must be invention, and invention is what delights me in other books.”
“The men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all.” That was published in 1817. Revisionism, indeed. Now pray excuse us while we swing the Cluebat of Janeite Righteousness for the fences.
REVIEW: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Game
Click to see larger version
Overview
The unmentionables are back, and this time it’s up to you to put them back in their graves! If you couldn’t get enough Pride and Prejudice and Zombies from the novel, do yourself a favor and check out the video-game adaptation by Freeverse, Inc. Yes, you actually get to play a katana-toting Lizzy as she traverses the English countryside, stately mansions, and trials of romance in a world beset by the unmentionables. Become a zombie-slaying machine, learning new combat techniques, and find out just what that Darcy guy’s problem is! P&P&Z: The Game is available on iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, or any other iThingy with access to the App Store. Read more…
Happy Blogiversary To Us
AustenBlog–at the time called JaneBlog*–had its soft launch on July 1, 2004, and our “grand opening,” when we actually started to tell people about it who weren’t helping us set it up, on July 15, 2004. Six years later, we’re still trucking along, more or less. Reading those old daily posts about the most esoteric of esoterica makes us feel extremely lazy; but much has happened in those six years.
Dorothy’s made a fresh pitcher of iced lemon chiffon rooibos and is serving it somewhere air conditioned. We were in the first fever of putting this blog together over another hot Independence Day weekend, so the heat wave is making us feel a bit nostalgic; but now that the fabulous new high-tech AustenBlog World Headquarters have central air conditioning and a pool, we are keeping cool even as we slave over the computer, and hope you all are, too (or warm for our friends in the Southern Hemisphere).
We promised a new look a few months back, didn’t we? While it’s still a work in progress, the main pieces are in place. We asked the lovely and talented Teresa AF–who also helped us with our first layout–to assist, sent her a photo of the Cluebat of Janeite Righteousness (yes, there really is one) and our favorite old-time baseball girl, and she waved her magic PhotoShop wand and sent the fab banner above, which we love and makes us squee.
If you’re wondering about the tagline, it comes from one of our favorite baseball movies (and favorite movies in general), “A League of Their Own.”
So if the Editrix ever exercises the Cluebat upon you, remember, it could be worse: Rogers Hornsby could have called you a talking pile of pigsh*t. Just saying.
*JaneBlog lasted about three days and was given up when we found another blog called JaneBlog by a young lady named, unsurprisingly, Jane. She was a Janeite so we decided to play nice and went with AustenBlog.
Thanks to Laurel Ann for asking us to participate in her Pride and Prejudice Without Zombies event!
An author—especially a talented and clever one like Jane Austen—subtly imparts information about her characters with details such as their occupation, their mode of conversation, and even something seemingly so minor as their carriage. In Pride and Prejudice, the alert reader can pick up information not only about the characters but about the plot itself from the type of carriage used by a character in a particular situation.
In Jane Austen’s day, a carriage was definitely a luxury item. They were expensive to purchase, naturally, and there were ongoing expenses in repair, storage, coachmen to care for and operate them, and the ongoing expenses of maintaining or renting horses to pull them; so it was a matter of interest to the impertinently nosy whether a person kept a carriage, and what kind. It was almost a method of broadcasting one’s wealth to the world. Read more…
