Lots out there this week, much about Lost in Austen (which I have not yet watched…oh woe is me!), and a few other tidbits of interest…

Fashion on Main, an exhibit at the University of Texas; see the site for a search-able database of the collection (though the “search” feature is under construction; you can browse the site), and references to other fashion resources.

 And more on fashion in the time of Marie Antoinette, read this post on the Queen’s modist (clothing creator) at the Paper Crown Queen Blog, where there is a host of information and pictorials on crowns.

And the ongoing saga of “Lost in Austen” and the many reviews and opinions thereof:  see Austenblog for its usual candid round-up of comments, and also today for Episode 3, and Jane Austen’s World Blog for a nice review of Episode 2, and another review at Austenprose.

See the Times-Picayune (LA) write-up of a Jane Austen Festival in Mandeville, LA on September 13 (alas! I missed it!….but there is another in March, so put it on your calendar if you happen to be in Louisiana): an Austen “Regency Revisited” Day at the Mandeville Trailhead Pavilion.  Organizers of the Jane Austen Festival host a morning of music, dancing, a fashion show and workshop, 10 a.m.-1. Period dancing with free lessons begins, at 10 a.m. The public is invited to bring costumes/outfits/accessories and experts will demonstrate how to convert them into Regency style apparel, appropriate for the festival in March. Free. For details, visit http://www.janeaustenfestival.org/. or call 985.624.5683.

And here is a journalist from the Herald.ie  who has had it with adaptations of classic literature, especially Austen “who has colonised television in a way that no other dead author has managed.”  But alas!  she informs the reader that the gorgeous Rupert Penry-Jones of Spooks (MI-5 in the U.S.) and the ITV Persuasion, will play in a new television version of John Buchan’s oft-filmed The Thirty-Nine Steps.  Can’t wait!

Austenprose continues to offer us the journaling of Virginia Claire Tharrington, the intern at the Jane Austen Centre in Bath:  see her first post and this week’s.  We are all SO envious!

Jane Odiwe tells of her newest book being published by Sourcebooks next year:  Mrs. Brandon’s Invitation, a sequel to Sense & Sensibility.

Several reviews of Marsha Altman’s The Darcys and the Bingleys, are sited at Austenprose; see Jane Austen Today for an interview with the author.

An article in Piecework Magazine is mentioned on Austenblog; also see the comment from the current President of JASNA, Marsha Huff, referencing a Persuasions article on the coverlet that Jane Austen, Cassandra and their mother made (the quilt now hangs in Chawton), so you, too, can make a replica of this quilt.  [See also my previous reference to the JASA article on this topic.]

Ms. Place at JA’s World continues the column with Marjorie Gilbert and her creation of a regency gown… this week is about the necessary regency undergarments.

Excellent sleuthing by Laurel Ann at Austenprose who writes “The Legend of the Lost Sequel“, about the publishing history of D.A. Bonavia-Hunt’s Pemberely Shades.  

See the article in the Western Daily Press about the Crazy for Jane movie premiere at the Bath JA Festival. The documentary tells the tale of contemporary publishers rejection of Jane Austen novels…shame on them!