Just got this pic from one of my Austen lists… Jane Austen at DragonCon.

Austenites, like librarians, tend to have the most unfortunate stereotypes and, usually, a very good sense of humor!

guess this is a thing now…

The North Texas Region is thrilled to be hosting the 2011 AGM, “Jane Austen: 200 years of Sense and Sensibility,” celebrating the 200th anniversary of the publication of the novel.

The conference will be held October 14th-16th in the beautifully restored Renaissance Worthington Hotel centrally located in Fort Worth’s famous Sundance Square. Within steps of the hotel JASNA visitors will be spoiled for choice with a multitude of inviting restaurants, shops, and cultural sites.

Our captivating plenary speakers include Andrew Davies speaking on adapting Jane Austen to film, Deirdre Le Faye discussing Jane and Cassandra Austen as no one else can, and Joan Ray helping us work through the troubling parts of Sense and Sensibility. We will also be hosting a Regency Makeover class with historical cosmetic expert and former president of Beauty Control Cosmetics, Jinger Heath.

JASNA members will be invited to attend a private tour of the internationally acclaimed Nasher Sculpture Gardens with the Nasher family, a garden tour of the Ft. Worth Botanical Gardens with an expert in Regency gardens, bull riding instructions, as well as the traditional church service, afternoon tea, and tours of the Dallas/Ft. Worth area. Most importantly there will be ample time for visiting with friends, old and new, to discuss and celebrate everything Jane.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

See ya there!

Thanks to wonderful @devlogic for sending this along to me just now!!

Pride & Prejudice & Zombies- the first three chapters!

I haven’t meant to be posting about Jane Austen or Pride & Prejudice a lot lately… but it just so happens that ppl are crazy about taking her most popular work and putting their own twist on it lately. I have pre-ordered my copy of Pride & Prejudice & Zombies already… here is something else to ruffle the purist Austenite feathers!

On the Marvel website there are some excerpts… wonder how this will work as a comic.. er, uh excuse me, graphic novel. I don’t have a lot of experience with graphic novels myself. Jane Eyre: The Graphic Novel, is on my Amazon Wish List simply because I think that would look good as a graphic novel. There is a lot of wandering around on moors, fire, and general spooky in this story that could make it exciting.

But seriously… what is the deal lately? Everyone is Austen crazy!

Elton John’s Rocket Pictures hopes to make the first Jane Austen adaptation to which men will drag their girlfriends.Will Clark is set to direct “Pride and Predator,” which veers from the traditional period costume drama when an alien crash lands and begins to butcher the mannered protags, who suddenly have more than marriage and inheritance to worry about.

Shooting will begin in London later this year. John exec produces, and his Rocket partners Steve Hamilton Shaw and David Furnish are producing.

Clark, who directed award-winning short “The Amazing Trousers,” wrote the script with Andrew Kemble and John Pape.

“It felt like a fresh and funny way to blow apart the done-to-death Jane Austen genre by literally dropping this alien into the middle of a costume drama, where he stalks and slashes to horrific effect,” Furnish said.

John will supervise the music, as he does in each Rocket-produced film.

The company is in production on the CG-animated “Gnomeo and Juliet” for Miramax/Disney; James McAvoy and Emily Blunt voice the title characters. Rocket is also behind the Sundance series “Spectacle: Elvis Costello With …”

~~~~~~~~

I took this from Seth Grahame-Smith’s Amazon.com blog. You might remember that he is the guy that wrote came up with Pride & Prejudice & Zombies…

Pride & Prejudice & Zombies
by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith

Not out yet but available for pre-order from Amazon.com

[taken from The Stranger]

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies features the original text of Jane Austen’s beloved novel with all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie action. As our story opens, a mysterious plague has fallen upon the quiet English village of Meryton—and the dead are returning to life! Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but she’s soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy. What ensues is a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young lovers—and even more violent sparring on the blood-soaked battlefield as Elizabeth wages war against hordes of flesh-eating undead. Complete with 20 illustrations in the style of C. E. Brock (the original illustrator of Pride and Prejudice), this insanely funny expanded edition will introduce Jane Austen’s classic novel to new legions of fans.

~~~~~~~~

Not sure what to think about this. The idea of introducing Jane Austen’s work to a group that wouldnt normally be interested is appealing. And I literally asked a friend of mine just this morning… who DOESN’T like zombies? But meddling with something as classic as Jane Austen’s P&P?

All my librarians are thrilled about this. We are doing a Teen Symposium in a few weeks with a Zombie theme. When I told them I ran across this, they almost jumped out of their skin they were so excited. They are truly looking at this as a gateway drug to more Austen. However, I know some purists that are going to be livid…

I decided to ruffle some feathers. I posted discussions on the two Jane Austen groups I am a member of on Shelfari.com. Here is what they had to say…

“I think that sounds fantastic!!… I would definitely read it just to see how they work that into being.”

I think it sounds hilarious. It might be a fun read.

From the AustenBlog… We also were shown an excerpt, and it is basically the text of P&P with zombie stuff added. It’s not really a rewrite. We’re not entirely sure the joke will hold up throughout the whole novel, and we actually prefer ninjas with our classics, but we’ll see in April!

General consensus seems to be good! I must say that I am curious to see how they added “zombie stuff”. I looked up this author to see what else he has done… this doesnt look good… How to Survive a Horror Movie: All the Skills to Dodge the Kills, The Big Book of Porn: A Penetrating Look at the World of Dirty Movies, (the only one that looked mildly promising) Pardon My President: Fold-And-Mail Apologies for 8 Years of George W. Bush were the top 3 titles on Amazon.com.

This should be interesting!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

UPDATE!

Hollywood studios are bidding to turn a radical reworking of Austen’s most popular book, now called Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, a parody to be published in April, into a blockbuster movie.

Desperate for new ideas, studio chiefs hope “P&P&Z” will mark the bloody birth of a feral offspring of classic British literature: “monster-lit”.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

ADDITIONAL UPDATE!!

This is a letter from the author of P&P&Z to Austenites everywhere…

To Janeites Everywhere…

9:50 AM PST, February 4, 2009

Margaret C. Sullivan — fellow Quirk author and “Editrix” of AustenBlog, has fired a warning shot across my bow (actually, I believe her words were “back off Zombie Boy”).

Apparently, my posts have given the impression that I’m some anti-Austen upstart looking to pick a fight with the purists.  Not so.  I AM reacting to the bile I’ve found in a lot of the talkback forums out there.  Namely people hating on the book (and me) without bothering to read it.

For the record, I love Jane Austen.  She wrote comedies.  She was subversive and snarky and wore bonnets.  Good qualities, all.  And I love Pride and Prejudice.  I’d wager I read it cover-to-cover thirty times while writing P&P&Z.  It was the most fun I’ve ever had writing.  Seriously.

So I offer you my mea culpa.  I promise not to lump Janeites in with the random haters around the nets.

– Zombie Boy

Northanger Abbey
by Jane Austen
Published December 1817
Gothic Romance Satire

This was her first novel to be finished for publication in 1798ish… although it wasn’t published until 1817 by her brother after her death. It was purchased to be published in 1803 but never was so her brother bought it back and had it published. Jane did not chose the title Northanger Abbey but rather referred to it as Miss Catherine in a letter. Pemberley.com, Wikipedia

It seems very obvious to the reader, but not to Catherine, that Isabella has schemed her way into a relationship with James. I would be very interested to have the first half of this story told from Isabella’s POV just to see how it all went down. Isabella dotes on Catherine but only in the most superficial way… but in Catherine considers her a true friend.

From reading criticism, Austen fans seem to have the most problems with Fanny of Mansfield Park. I am having problems really liking Catherine. Fanny at least saw the problems around her. Catherine doesnt see anything around her. Yes, she can stand up to people when necessary.

This work is famous for Austen’s Defense of the Novel… Catherine is caught up in Anne Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho and loves to talk about it. It is made clear that reading novels is much like reading romance novel today and is something that only the women do. However, Austen has an aside where she makes a statement in defense of the novel.

Emma
by Jane Austen
Fiction
Published Dec of 1815

This book is hilarious! If ever you could imagine the Benny Hill theme song playing during a Jane Austen novel, this would be it. Now I guess I need to watch the movie Clueless… I never really wanted to before but I think I will enjoy it more having this story in my head. I also really want to see the Gwyneth Paltrow movie!

Emma is unlike Austen’s other leading ladies in that she is not on the prowl to marry well… she has a bright financial future. Throughout most of the book, she has no inclination to marry… while she is silly and pretentious in other ways, I liked that she was not eager to marry.

There is a lot of criticism that Emma is annoying and awful… and I must say that I don’t fully agree. Oh yes, she does and says some very obnoxious things… I think each character, but Emma especially, is a caricature of herself and the society of the time. I think she is just oblivious to right or wrong. Also, I cannot help but think that each of those characters was representing someone that Austen knew…

Anyway, that is why I cannot dislike her. She has a good heart but she cannot help what she is… a very spoiled girl. She tries to control the lives of those around her, but we as readers cannot help but laugh because she has no control and no idea whatsoever! However, everything works out in the end… all are friends again, they have a good laugh over all the silly things they did, and everyone gets paired off properly.

Mansfield Park
by Jane Austen
Published 1814 by Mr. Egerton
Bildungsroman

The bildungsroman genre focuses on the growing and shaping of a young protagonist. In this case, Fanny Price… and the Barbara Streisand fan in me cannot help but think Fanny Brice!!

One of my favorite lines of the book is on the first page… “There are certainly not so many men of large fortune in the world as there are of pretty woman to deserve them.” This does a wonderful job of summing up what Austen spent most of her time writing about because it was such an important topic of the day. Austen quotes are so much better when they come from her as the narrator rather than one of her character.

I immediately sympathized with Fanny when Lady Bertram and Mrs. Norris spoke about bringing her to Mansfield to help raise her… they said that she needed to be sister enough that the brothers wouldn’t consider marrying her yet not think herself on the same level as the Bertram sisters. Mrs. Norris spends a lot of time reminding her of her “position” with the family. And when Henry proposes to Fanny, Norris is more upset that she got the proposal than that she turned it down while Lady Bertram sees Fanny in a new light. Mrs. Norris might be one of the most infuriating characters ever… INTERESTING TIDBIT: Argus Filch’s cat in the Harry Potter series is named Mrs. Norris… It is said on the internet that it is a reference to the Mansfield Norris but I have no idea if this is true or not…

Austen and other writers of the time did not finish proper nouns… for instance, ” and they took off to see the races at B—shire.” I was right when I assumed it was to create as much anonymity about the fictional story as possible… or at least I was right according to some research I did…

A development of this was that if they used real places, or real regiments, or what looked like real
places and real regiments, then people could say “Well, the Colonel of that regiment wasn’t callled xxxxxx, or the Colonel of that regiment didn’t do that/wasn’t the fool you make him out to be/couldn’t possibly have given that order!” Authors would be opening themselves up to accusations of libel, if not stupidity.

It’s also a fall-out from a literary convention of the time when many books and pamphlets were written criticising the government of the day, or important figures, by using false names. Defoes’ Gullivers Travels is possibly the best known of the earlier ones. Since the reporting of Parliamentary discussions was banned until about 1808, it had to be reported in newspapers under false names (and Samuel Johnson first did it by reporting the activities of the people of Lilliput!). Some rather scurrilous stories were also printed which were thinly veiled parodies or criticisms of important figures.

So when Jane Austen wrote the _________shire regiment, or the Earl of _________, she was a)avoiding the pitfall of being accused of inaccuracy and b) avoiding the pitfall of being accused of criticism of some important political figures.
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=307906

Parts of the plot represent social change taking place at the time such as Henry and Mary moving from the big city (London) out into the country. They are obviously unaccustomed to the lifestyle.

Also, the slave trade is an important topic in this book… it happens at a time when slave trade was controversial in Great Britain. In 1807, following many years of lobbying by the Abolitionist movement, the British Parliament voted to make the slave trade illegal anywhere in the empire. Thereafter Britain took a prominent role in combatting the trade, although it took another generation before slavery itself was abolished.Also, in 1811 (just a few years before this book was published), Arthur William Hodge was the first slave owner executed for the murder of a slave in the British West Indies. He though was not, as some have claimed, the first white person to have been lawfully executed for the killing of a slave. [Wikipedia] As Sir Thomas has a plantation and slaves, we see first hand how this is changing their society.

The importance of the letters in moving along the plot at the end of the book made me wonder about letter writing etiquette in that period… All of the letters seemed to be very candid. The writers spoke freely of their emotions… that is, except for Fanny. Edmund told Fanny in a string of letters that he was going to propose to Mary Crawford… and then that he wasn’t. I couldnt help but wonder how the story might be different if any of those letters had fallen into other hands.

From what criticism I have read of Mansfield Park, it seems that readers are torn over Fanny as a heroine. Personally I think its hard for a modern reader to be able to relate to Fanny. However, not being able to relate to a character because the reader lives in such a different time with different values is part of what is intriguing. How different their lives were! We take for granted so many things that they would have found very valuable. I find Fanny a loveable character and a breath of fresh air as compared to those around her!