A few thoughts for this week….

• Again, I encourage you to visit Austenprose for the delightful and on-going discussion of Mansfield Park.  Laurel Ann has created an inspiring 17-day journey through the book, movies, audios, etc.  Please particpate by posting your thoughts on Fanny and perhaps win one of her giveaways along the way…
•  The JASNA site has added a most helpful section:  a map for each book to guide the reader around the England of Austen’s fiction.  This section reproduces maps of the novels from Where’s Where in Jane Austen . . . and What Happens There, by Patrick Wilson, published by the Jane Austen Society of Australia (JASA). The maps include both real and fictional places, and the book provides information about more than 400 locations in Austen’s fiction. The book is available for purchase on JASA’s web site. 
• The JASA site is a minefield of Austen information… there is a great selection of book reviews; and click here for their reviews comparing ten biographies of Austen….
• And back at the JASNA site, you can read the winning essays for 2008 from High School and College students.  The topic was on the new Masterpiece Theatre adaptations (essays are available in full-text) 

I have discovered the Dressing Jane website…read the newsletters about fashion in Jane Austen’s time as well as the Dressing History site for all possible types of fashion reproductions for purchase.

This has little to do with Jane, other than the fashion obsession, but see this great article  “Dressing by the Decades” in the Calgary Herald on what to wear this season….you can pick your favorite fashion style and rest easy (but alas! no regency gowns in sight!)

• Oxford University has several online courses of interest:  on Jane Austen; the Brontes; Reading Victorian Fiction (Dickens, Trollope, Eliot, and Hardy); Fiction of Victorian Women (Eliot, Gaskell, Oliphant, and others) [but alas! the courses are quite expensive for a non-EU participant]
•  For you Walter Scott fans (and indeed, Scott loved Austen, so he should be reverenced…), the Edinburgh University Press has just published two of Scott’s “undecipherable and unfit for publication” stories.  See the full article at the Guardian.uk
• For those costume-drama lovers out there, link to this Mail Online (U.K.)  article about the latest P&P (Lost in Austen) and Hardy’s Tess, both starring the latest Bond girl….
• A new book titled “Who the Hell is Pansy O’Hara?” tells the back stories of 50 of the greatest books… and Austen’s Pride & Prejudice is one of the books discussed…
• Becoming Jane Fansite has been posting an Austen quote each week…. click here for this week’s choice, one of my favorites from Persuasion…
• Jane Austen’s World has another lovely post on The Etiquette of Calling Cards
• Pamela Aiden, the author of Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman Series,  has a new work she is publishing online called Young Mr. Darcy…. click here for the first 2 chapters (this news as per the Central New Jersey JASNA Chapter)
• The New Jersey Chapter is also again requesting comments on Jane Austen…10 words that best describe Austen and her work.  Click here to participate and see other comments.