Category Archives: Austenalia

When Covid started and my in-person book clubs and groups started canceling, I went looking for something inspiring.  What I found was the Chawton House Reading Group.  For the uninitiated, Chawton House is the home of not only Jane Austen’s brother and in the same village as Jane Austen’s House Museum, but it is alsoContinue reading “Reflection on the Chawton House Reading Group, women in history and Mary Eleanor Bowes…”

Well, Janeites, it is with a heavy heart that I report to you: this book is not very good.  I had high hopes, since it was a murder mystery, but alas those hopes were dashed upon the rocks of mediocrity. As may be surmised from the title, this is a retelling of Mansfield Park inContinue reading “Murder at Mansfield Park by Lynn Shepherd”

This 1913 title lays claim to being the first Austen fan fiction. Brinton wrote no other novels and this one attempts to continue the stories of many characters from Austen novels all in one book, with Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park as the most well represented, though the other four also populate her story.Continue reading “Old Friends and New Fancies an Imaginary Sequel to the Novels of Jane Austen by Sybil G. Brinton”

Lady Susan is frequently dismissed by scholars as a youthful creation of Austen, not worthy of inclusion among her mature works.  Many point to it as an example of her younger self experimenting with an epistolary novel, which she abandoned, and which she did not revisit in her later writing.  She revised Elinor and Marianne,Continue reading “Rereading Lady Susan by Jane Austen”