“I begin already to weigh my words & sentences more than I did, & am looking about for a sentiment, an illustration, or a metaphor in every corner of the room. Could my Ideas flow as fast as the rain in the Storecloset it would be charming. ”
—Jane Austen, 1809
Beth Pattillo's first novel, "Jane Austen Ruined My Life," is an entertaining read.
Jane Austen Ruined My Life, by Beth Pattillo (Guideposts Books)
Emma Grant blames Jane Austen for encouraging her to believe in happy endings. Happy endings are in short supply in Emma’s life. First she found her husband Edward and her teaching assistant in flagrante delicto, on her kitchen table, no less. Then the assistant, with the backing of now ex-hubby, accused Emma of plagiarism, destroying her career as an English lit professor.
Emma responds to this insult by fleeing to England to track down an alleged cache of previously undiscovered letters by Jane Austen.
In England, she runs straight into Adam, the former best friend who dropped out of her life when she married Edward. And she encounters an eccentric grandmotherly woman who claims to have access to an unimaginable treasure—thousands of letters by Jane Austen.
Beth Pattillo’s first novel (to be followed this February by Mr. Darcy Broke My Heart) is an entertaining, emotionally satisfying story. Emma Grant is an independent, likable heroine with a sense of humor and a set of scruples, keeping her true to the spirit of Austen.
Jane Austen Ruined My Life moves quickly, pays homage to Austen’s characters and stories without being totally predictable, and includes plenty of fun Austen biographical and historical tidbits. I’m looking forward to Pattillo’s second book.
Oh my, time does fly. Back in July, I announced that I would be taking part in the Everything Austen Challenge. I more than fulfilled the requirement to read or watch six Austen-related books or movies before January 1. In fact, I easily met the requirements of the Austen Challenge X Two. Alas, I have been too busy this fall (well, OK, sometimes just too lazy) to post about my reading and viewing adventures.
I’ve got bits and pieces of reviews scattered over my hard drive, which I will gather up and post over the next week or two, but in the meantime, I ring in the new year with a list of what I have read/watched since the Challenge began in July.
Like everything else about Jane Austen, her death continues to fascinate us. Literary scholars and Janeites still wonder about the illness that plagued the author for more than a year before she died at the age of 41 in July, 1817. It was during this time that she finished Persuasion, the saddest and most pensive of her novels.
In 1964, Dr. Zachary Cope proposed that Addison’s disease, a rare disorder in which the adrenal glands don’t produce enough hormones, killed the famous author. Her symptoms included extreme fatigue and weakness, faintness, back pain, nausea, and pain in the joints. To Cope, though, a vital clue was skin discoloration. “Recovering my looks a little, which have been bad enough, black and white and every wrong colour,” Austen wrote in March 1817. Addison’s disease can make the skin look bronze or mottled. (Reporters often wondered why U.S. President John F. Kennedy, who had Addison’s Disease, had a perpetual “tan.”)
In 1997, Austen biographer Claire Tomalin begged to differ, and thought Austen’s symptoms suggested lymphoma.
Katherine White, the coordinator for the Addison’s Disease Self-Help Group’s clinical advisory group in the United Kingdom, thinks something much more common killed Jane: bovine tuberculosis, probably from drinking unpasteurized milk. In a paper she wrote for the Medical Humanities journal, White (who is a social scientist, not a medical professional), argues that while Austen could have had Addison’s Disease, tuberculosis seems a more likely cause of her final illness and death.
The Oxford Times has a short interview with Claire Harman, author of Jane’s Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World (Canongate Books), a book that I read as part of my Austen Challenge and definitely recommend.
Jane didn’t grow popular until decades after her death, but since then her books have remained constantly in print and now, nearly 200 years after the publication of her first novel, Jane Austen remains a worldwide cultural phenomenon. The opening sentence of Pride and Prejudice is almost as widely used (and abused) as Hamlet’s “To be or not to be.”
Jane’s fame long ago eclipsed that of her novels. In fact, as Harman points out, a large number of Jane Austen fans have never actually read one of her books. (In the preface to Jane’s Fame, Harman shares an anecdote about a woman who sent the first chapters of Pride and Prejudice, bearing Austen’s original title of First Impressions and with proper names changed, to 18 British publishers. Not only did they all reject it, but apparently only one editor recognized it.)
This Saturday (September 19), the city of Bath, England, will look like something right out of a Jane Austen novel—at least for a while.
Bath, England, home of the annual Jane Austen Festival
As part of the city’s annual Jane Austen Festival, at least 350 enthusiasts will parade in period costume to set a record for the largest gathering of people in Regency costume ever, according to the Bath Chronicle’s website. (I suspect Guinness hasn’t seen much competition for this particular attempt.) One assumes they mean the largest modern gathering of people in Regency costume. No doubt hundreds of people in Regency dress gathered in those Assembly Rooms in, say, 1812.
There are strict rules for the record attempt, which will take place during the festival’s traditional Grand Regency Promenade on Saturday morning. Participants must wear full Regency attire and stay together in one place—the Assembly Rooms—for at least 10 minutes. No word on whether they’re required to rekindle relationships with old flames or dance with guys who know about the finer points of muslin.
The promenade is a spectacular costumed parade through the center of the city where Austen lived from 1801-1806. She set parts of Persuasion and Northanger Abbey in the resort city popular for its Roman architecture and healthful waters.
