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The Year of Jane Austen

March 8, 2008 by Vic

Today, Jane Austen is more popular than ever. Books, movie adaptations, sequels, and audio tapes are flooding the market. Her name is instantly recognizable, and her brand is HOT! Why not translate such fame into political glory?

republic-of-pemberley-flag-and-girl.jpg
Image, Regency Fashions, The Republic of Pemberley

Laurie Viera Rigler, the author of the current bestseller, The Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict, has been writing a series of informative posts about Jane Austen’s life and novels in conjunction with PBS’s Total Jane Austen. During a recent talk at Whittier Library in California, she discussed the idea of electing Jane Austen for President. According to her, Jane has character, experience, and courage. Her reasoning seems good enough for me:

If we go by the assumption that there is a little bit of the author in each of her characters—well, at least in each of the characters she likes—than who can lead the country better than someone who has the wit and intelligence of Elizabeth Bennet, the diplomacy of Anne Eliot, the prudence and strength of Elinor Dashwood, and the stay-the-course steadfastness of Fanny Price?

To read more of Laurie’s interesting political take, click here. Thank you Laurie, for giving me an alternative candidate. I was straddling the fence until you mentioned Jane.

Posted in jane austen, Jane Austen's enduring popularity | Tagged , , | 1 Comment »

Pride and Prejudice In My Home Town

March 7, 2008 by Vic

Oh, how wonderful, how droll. Lee Davis High School in Mechanicsville, Virginia is showcasing Pride and Prejudice tonight, tomorrow, and Saturday, and next weekend at the Black Box Theater. (March 6, 7, & 8th, and March 13, & 14). My friends and I have plans to attend. At $5.00, the tickets are a bargain. Learn more about the Lee Davis Players at this link, and stay tuned for more. Ms. Place hopes to meet some of the cast members.

Greer Garson Paper Dolls at Fancy Ephemera.com

Posted in Jane Austen Novels | Tagged , , , |

Illustrated Jane Austen

March 6, 2008 by Vic

Google books is simply an amazing online library resource. Since Google began to scan and digitize the books that sit in the world’s great libraries (at Harvard, Yale, and the University of Virginia, for example), authors, book sellers, and book publishers have been up in arms. Until the legalities are resolved, we can take advantage of the convenience of finding books that are often not in the public domain from the comfort of our homes. Unless they are entirely free of copyright infringement, most of the books that you can access through Google book search are partially complete. One can still glean an enormous amount of information in those partial books, however. Obscure authors of out-of-print books seem to be less incensed by this practice than their publishing houses, since their words are once again seeing the light of day and being READ. (Click on the links below to read more details about the controversy.)

One of my favorite finds is the Illustrated Jane Austen, a compilation of Jane’s six great books and two additional minor works. I have been reading Emma and Sense and Sensibility in anticipation of the last two airings of The Complete Jane Austen on PBS. You can imagine how delighted I was to view the illustrations by Hugh Thomson in this digitized book.

  • Click here to read Google’s rationalization for scanning the world’s books
  • And here is an assessment of the situation from Law.com
  • Click here to read my other post about Hugh Thomson

Posted in jane austen, Jane Austen illustrators, Jane Austen Novels | Tagged , | 5 Comments »

The World in Miniature: W. H. Pyne

March 4, 2008 by Vic

William Henry Pyne (1769 – 1843)

Many of the illustrations of London and the working class that we see of the regency era can be atttibuted to the artist and writer, William Henry Pyne. W.H. Pyne, the son of a leather seller and weaver, chronicled the working class in The Costumes of Great Britain. In his heyday he created a series of books for the publisher Rudolph Ackermann. Unfortunately, like James Gillray, Mr. Pyne’s illustrations ceased to be popular towards the end of his life, and he died in poverty.

    To learn more about W.H. Pyne, click on these links:

  • The World in Miniature: England, Scotland, and Ireland, edited by W.H. Pyne, containing a description of the character, manners, customs, dress, diversions, and other peculiarities of the inhabitants of Great Britain. In Four Volumes; illustrated with eighty-four coloured engravings, Volume 1, London, 1827, Printed for R. Ackermann, Repository of Arts, Strand.

Illustrations by Pyne: Blue Coat Boy, and Mail Coach from the Microcosm of London. Illustration of Bill Sticker from the World in Miniature.

Posted in Regency Life, Regency World | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Celia Johnson, the Forgotten Elizabeth Bennet

March 2, 2008 by Vic

As I researched material for yesterday’s post about Pride and Prejudice 2005, I ran across several articles that listed the actresses who played Elizabeth Bennet during the 20th century. These lists (click here and here) are excellent, but because they concentrate on films, they largely miss the contribution of one important actress, Celia Johnson, a British stage actress who played Lizzy in 1936. Online references to that play are so obscure that Celia’s performance is generally overlooked.

Celia played Elizabeth Bennet opposite Hugh Williams as Mr. Darcy at the St. James’s Theatre in London. Helen Jerome adapted this successful dramatization, titled Pride and Prejudice: A Sentimental Comedy in Three Acts, which continues to be performed today. As an interesting aside, Helen Jerome contributed to the screenplay of the 1940 film version of Pride and Prejudice, and it was said that Celia, who was born just four years after Greer Garson, was not particularly fond of her rival. The reasons were not given.

According to this detailed biographical account by Ian (?) Lloyd, Celia usually played ordinary women in normal settings, but she “was a huge success as Elizabeth Bennet in the hit Pride and Prejudice, in which she played the romantic heroine for once, and not the downtrodden or wronged woman.”
To British audiences of another generation, Celia was a well-known and highly regarded stage actress during the 1940’s and 50’s. She also made a few films shortly after World War II. Film aficionados might recall her turn as Trevor Howard’s love interest in Brief Encounter (see image above), and as a supporting actress in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, her last film. People in the UK can still listen to her narration of Pride and Prejudice by ordering the audio cassette. To learn more about Celia, click on the following links:

Post Script: I have added the information about the play to Pride and Prejudice in Wikipedia.


Posted in Celia Johnson, jane austen | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments »

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