I have been out-of-town, visiting the Big Apple and the Austen exhibit at the Morgan Library – this was fabulous! –  I will report on it in a later post, but for now, there is much to make note of in the ever-busy world of Jane Austen, so will summarize as best I can – you will see that we all have our reading cut out for us!

JASNA has published its new edition of Persuasions On-Line  [Volume 30, No. 1 Winter 2009] – and note that JASNA-Vermont’s own Kelly McDonald has a published article – see this highlighted below!

 Table of Contents: from the 2009 AGM on Jane Austen’s Brothers and Sisters 

• Brotherly Love in Eighteenth-Century Literature  Ruth Perry
• The City of Sisterly Love: Jane Austen’s Community as Sorority Laura S. Dabundo
• “Not half so handsome as Jane”: Sisters, Brothers, and Beauty in the Novels of Jane Austen Stephanie M. Eddleman
• “You Must be a Great Comfort to Your Sister, Sir”: Why Good Brothers Make Good Husbands Deborah Knuth Klenck
• The Sibling Ideal in Jane Austen’s Novels: When Near Incest Really is Best Celia A. Easton
• Sororadelphia, or “even the conjugal tie is beneath the fraternal” James Thompson
• Inherited and Living Variables: The Choices of Sisters and Brothers in Mansfield Park
  Marcia McClintock Folsom
• The Closeness of Sisters: Imagining Cassandra and Jane  Juliette Wells
• Hazel Holt’s My Dear Charlotte: A Novel Based on Jane Austen’s Letters Jan Fergus
• Handwriting in the Time of Jane Austen  Robert Hurford

Miscellany:

• Willoughby’s Apology C. Durning Carroll
• Darcy’s Ardent Love and Resentful Temper in Pride and Prejudice Horace Jeffery Hodges
• Pemberley’s Welcome, or An Historical Conjecture Upon Elizabeth Darcy’s Wedding Journey  Kelly M. McDonald
• Darcy’s Vampiric Descendants: Austen’s Perfect Romance Hero and J. R. Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood  Sarah S. G. Frantz
• Going from Extremes: Mansfield Park as a Revision of Clarissa  Kathleen E. Urda
• “Mr. Cole is Very Bilious”: The Art of Lay Medicine in Jane Austen’s Characters Akiko Takei
• Scott’s “tenderest, noblest and best” in his Review of Emma  Joan Klingel Ray
• Adapting Emma for the Twenty-first Century: An Emma No One Will Like  Laurie Kaplan
• Queer Temporality, Spatiality, and Memory in Jane Austen’s Persuasion  Edward Kozaczka

 And remember to renew your JASNA membership if you have not already done so.  JASNA is now accepting membership registrations and donations via PayPal, so this is a fine time to give a gift membership to any of your Austen-loving friends!

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News from Tim Bullamore, the editor Jane Austen’s Regency World:  the January/February 2010 (No 43) edition of is published today and features the following:

•  Sex and the city: Dan Cruickshank explains how London was built on the wages of sin
• Comparing Jane Austen with Iris Murdoch. Dr Gillian Dooley examines similar traits in Austen’s Mansfield Park and Murdoch’s A Fairly Honourable Defeat
• Jane’s civil rogue. Maggie Lane, consultant editor of JARW, discusses John Murray, Jane’s publisher
• When the bubble burst: the devastation caused by the South Sea Bubble, by Joanna Brown
• Three Creole Ladies. Paul Bethel on Empress Josephon, Fanny Nisbet and Jane Leigh Perrot
• Prince of Prints. Inside Ackermann’s Repository of the Arts, by Sue Wilkes
• Queen of Science, The tale of Mary Somerville, by Nelly Morrison

NEW for this issue is our Austen Quiz: test your knowledge of Jane Austen 

Plus: book reviews, My Jane Austen (Sandy Welch, who adapted Emma for the BBC) and news from JAS and JASNA [note that Elaine Bander, President of JASNA-Canada, has written an article on the Jane Austen House Tour of 2009] 

There is also the chance to win a Jane Austen audiobook set from Naxos (worth £199) 

Coming up in March/April 2010: a music special: what was on Jane Austen’s iPod, PLUS a FREE CD with every copy, featuring music from Bath in Jane Austen’s time. 

For more information or to subscribe [which you must do!], please visit:  http://www.janeaustenmagazine.co.uk/

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The Chawton House Library‘s latest issue of The Female Spectator just showed up in my mailbox [Vol. 13, No. 4, Autumn 2009] with three fine articles:

• “Charlotte Lennox’s ‘Spirited and Natural’ Marketing Strategy” by Susan Carlisle, about Lennox’s novel Henrietta (1758) and her adaptation of it into her play The Sister (1769)
• “The History of the Novel as Glimpsed through Chawton’s Manuscripts,” by Emily C. Friedman
• “Making Our Literary Mothers: The Case of Delarivier Manley,” by Victoria Joule

You too can receive this newsletter by becoming a Friend of the Library – for more information, visit the website here.

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The Jane Austen Centre in Bath has just published its December newsletter, and it too is filled with Austen and holiday goodies:  go to this link to sign up for this free monthly e-newsletter; appended below are links to some of the December issue contents:

• Pride & Prejudice & Zombies; The Movie
• The Austen Family Prepares for Advent
• A Stuffed Christmas Turkey  [photo above – yum!]
• A Christmas poem by the poet John Clare [1793-1864]
• ‘Are You A Janeite?’ quiz
• Plus lots for sale at the Centre’s online gift shop here http://giftshop.janeausten.co.uk/index.html

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In celebration of Jane Austen’s 234th birthday, Cambridge University Press is pleased to offer a 20% discount* on their most recent Austen scholarship.  Search the site for the following titles:

1. Letters of Jane Austen 2 Volume Set from the Cambridge Library Collection – Literary Studies
2. Jane Austen and the Enlightenment, by Peter Knox-Shaw
3. The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Jane Austen 9 volume HB set [just in case you have an extra $900. lying around…]

Enter Discount Code MW09AUSTEN to receive your discount!
*Offer expires January 1st 2010

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Masterpiece Theater: the new three-part Emma will be broadcast FINALLY in the US on January 24 – February 7.  Click here for the latest information and to view the trailer.  Masterpiece also offers the Austen addict a fun piece of selecting which of the PBS “Men of Austen” you would select for a mate – each has a full description of their best qualities and their “turnoffs” – take a look and choose – I will not tell the results, but you can rest assured that John Thorpe has come in last in this selection process! 

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/austen/menofausten.html

[oh goodness! – who to choose, who to choose…]

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I’ll have more on the Morgan exhibit, but here is a short video of “Fran Lebowitz: Reflections on Austen,” part of the 16 minute “Divine Jane” video presentation that accompanies the exhibit.  The Harriet Walter [a.k.a. Fanny Dashwood] piece is also now available online.

 Stay tuned ~ more to come on the Morgan exhibit…

[Posted by Deb]