Category: Jane Austen

Heroes to fall in love with

Updated on October 17, 2013 by Janet Mullany

I think it’s pretty much standard that when you write romance you fall in love with the hero, even if at certain stages of the book you want to give him a smack upside the head and tell him not to be such a stubborn, insensitive, clueless idiot. And we hope that our readers fall in love with him and the heroine, or even the relationship itself. Lizzie and Darcy, anyone?

So here’s my Top Ten, in no particular order, of fictional heroes I have fallen in love with:

Black Beauty. Yes, I know he’s a horse. I was six, okay?

Mr. Tumnus in The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe. Ditto faun, and I was eight. But I fell all over in love with him again in the movie and James McAvoy’s goaty goodness. Talking of which, check out this very sexy dance scene from the very indifferent movie Becoming Jane. Ooh.

Henry Tilney. He is the best Austen hero. He knows about laundry. He has social skills, does not practice pluralism, and is the success story of his dysfunctional family.

Lord Peter Wimsey. Or, to be specific, Lord Peter Wimsey in Gaudy Night, when Harriet falls in love with him, finally, and he is translated into instant hotness. Placetne, magistra?

Sam Vine in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. A cop with smarts, a tender heart, a strong sense of justice, and a love of bacon sandwiches.

Lord Vetinari, also from Discworld. What’s not to love! An autocrat who was trained as an assassin, given to sarcasm and steepling of fingers.

Dorothea Brooke from Middlemarch by George Eliot. So she’s a girl (so was George). You have a problem with that?

Will Ladislaw, also from Middlemarch. All that exotic foreign radical hotness.

Jasper Hedges from Pam Rosenthal’s The Edge of Impropriety. Smart, shabby, beautiful hands, glasses, and actually smacks away the heroine’s hand during their first encounter because he can undo his trouser buttons faster than she can.

Temeraire the dragon from Naomi Novik’s series. Even if he does have eggs with other women I love him still.

And #11, bonus material, Will Lawrence from the same series.

How about you?

Posted in Jane Austen, Reading | 5 Replies

Jane Austen & the Baltimore Book Festival

Updated on September 26, 2013 by Janet Mullany

First, if you haven’t heard, great news–the fundraising effort to keep Jane Austen’s ring where it belongs, at the Jane Austen House Museum, has been successful! I am very excited. As you know, I feel very strongly about national treasures disappearing into private ownership. I had a minor sort of rant about the possible fate of the ring when it first went on the block. (I’m trying really, really hard not to gloat in public. Give me credit for making the effort.)

I was originally planning a post today about a tie-in between my book Hidden Paradise and the movie Austenland. They’re both about Austen-themed resorts, except in my book there’s a load more sex. But I haven’t yet seen the movie and I read this truly awful review of it. However it is the one-year anniversary of my book, so why not buy it. Even better, why not come to the Baltimore Book Festival tomorrow and hear me talk about Austen and buy a signed copy. I’m on a panel at noon with Leslie Carroll and Diana Peterfreund talking about Austen and our Austen knock-offs, and reading excerpts on the Maryland Romance Writers‘ stage. I’ll probably be reading from Jane and the Damned.

I’ll still be around at 7 when I’m joining a gaggle of other authors for a panel called Fifty Shades of Hot, in which we talk about–no, not that book, but our own. Panelists are Damon Suede, Eliza Knight, Stephanie Draven, Kate Poole, and Megan Hart. (Incidentally, the 6 pm panel includes chocolate, so you might want to come early!)

The Baltimore Book Festival continues through the weekend, with food, music, beer, readings, and books. LOTS of books. It’s lots of fun and I hope you can drop by!

Pride and Prejudice – A Victorian Soap Opera???

Updated on September 15, 2013 by Diane Gaston

I’m continuing Myretta’s Jane Austen theme today.

The Christian Science Monitor just published an article on the 200th anniversary of Pride and Prejudice, coinciding with Bath’s annual Jane Austen Festival. The title of the article is “Victorian-era soap opera turns 200: Pride and Prejudice still resonates today.”

Doesn’t that raise your hackles?

My goodness! First to call the book Victorian-era?

One could argue whether the book was Regency, because it was published in 1813, during the Regency, or whether it was Georgian, since Austen first wrote it in 1797, but it is lightyears from being Victorian in time-period and story! One wonders whether the journalist (or title writer) ever thought to check his research on that matter? Ironically, attached to the article is a a quiz about the United Kingdom (more on that later). I suspect the writers would not score well.

Then to call Pride and Prejudice a soap opera? Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

The article compares the popularity of Downton Abbey to Pride and Prejudice. Now, I love Downton Abbey, but it is more a soap opera than Pride and Prejudice ever could be. Wikipedia defines a soap opera as: a serial drama, on television or radio, that features multiple related story lines dealing with the lives of multiple characters. The stories in these series typically focus heavily on emotional relationships to the point of melodrama.

Pride and Prejudice isn’t a series. True, the book has multiple characters with multiple story lines and is heavily focused on emotional relationships, but never never to the point of melodrama! Austen did not write melodrama. She wrote with a keen observation, wisdom, and wit about people, about their strengths and weaknesses, about how they could change and grow-through love.

What’s more, Pride and Prejudice is considered one of the greatest books in literature. It regularly appears on lists of the greatest books of all time (except on one list I read yesterday and couldn’t find today to provide a link. And this list of 100 Must Read Books for Men- only one woman author there, Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird). Consider this quote from Anna Quindlen:

Pride and Prejudice is also about that thing that all great novels consider, the search for self. And it is the first great novel to teach us that that search is as surely undertaken in the drawing room making small talk as in the pursuit of a great white whale or the public punishment of adultery. (from Wikipedia)

Other than that, the article is pretty decent with some good observations from people who have the expertise to speak knowledgeably about the book.

It also includes a fun quiz – How Well Do You Know Pride and Prejudice? I scored only 80% mostly because I didn’t know enough about the film adaptations of the book. And I guessed Lizzie’s age wrong.

The article also links to another quiz – Keep calm and answer on: Take our United Kingdom quiz. I scored 80% on this one, too, mostly because I know Regency history, but not much else!

Take the quizzes and tell us how you do!

Do you think Pride and Prejudice is a soap opera?

Posted in Frivolity, Jane Austen, Reading | Tagged Anna Quindlen, Christian Science Monitor, Jane Austen, Jane Austen Festival, Pride and Prejudice, quiz, United Kingdom | 13 Replies

Me & Dennis–a very close relationship

Updated on September 5, 2013 by Janet Mullany

I want to share with you all some news.

Dennis and I are together again.

Yes, Dennis the kneebrace.

We have been on and off since I indulged in some extreme gardening a few years ago. Having fallen flat on my back while ripping up English ivy, it was–oh my gosh, it was like Marianne and Willoughby in better weather. With his assistance I could stand and he flung me onto the back of his stallion and rode with me back to safety, me nestled in the comfort of his warm cloak, inhaling his masculine woodsy scent of lime and tobacco and beer and all that. Well, sort of. I’m a bit nervous of sniffing Dennis after the very hot weather where you sweat in strange places, like the back of the knee.

And since then, he has answered my call. Except for the time he didn’t and I fell into a decline. I decided then I’d go with the first substitute I met, and in the pharmacy I met a sneering billionaire kneebrace who wanted to strap me up good and proper and restrain me in fifty shades of whatever. Consequently I now have an Upstairs Dennis and a Downstairs Dennis.

Most recently we took a fabulous trip to San Francisco and together we strode through the city and sat around for hours in coffee shops writing. I’m not even sure my lovely hosts were aware that I brought Dennis and not my husband. We were very discreet.

And after that trip, things sort of cooled off.

But this morning, feeling the pangs of unrequited love (pangs at any rate), I took Upstairs Dennis out of the dirty laundry basket, reveling in the clean masculine smell of his sweat (or more likely my own) and got it on.

Posted in Anything but writing, Frivolity, Jane Austen | Tagged Dennis the kneebrace, generally silly stuff | 6 Replies

A Lady’s Accomplishments

Updated on September 2, 2013 by Diane Gaston

Happy Labor Day, everyone!

In Virginia, Labor Day is, by law, the day before school starts, so it seems fitting for me to discuss education, specifically the education of a Regency young lady.

Our heroes all have attended Eton or Harrow and on to Oxford or Cambridge, but what of our heroines? There really wasn’t parallel educational paths for women during the Regency. Daughters of the aristocracy were typically educated at home by governesses, like Jane Austen’s Emma, supplemented by music masters, drawing masters and dance masters, of course.

There were boarding schools, many of them in Bath. The better ones catered to the daughters of the ton, but daughters of gentry might attend such schools as well. Not all of these schools gave what we would consider a quality education. Later than the Regency (1840), Dorothea Beale describes:

…what miserable teaching we had in many subjects; history was learned by committing to memory little manuals; rules of arithmetic were taught, but the principles were never explained. Instead of reading and learning the masterpieces of literature, we repeated week by week the ‘Lamentations of King Hezekiah’, the pretty but somewhat weak ‘Mother’s Picture’.

Being truly educated, a bluestocking, was not a desirable condition for a lady, though. Young ladies were expected to be accomplished, not educated. In Pride and Prejudice, Caroline Bingley gives us a list (Austen’s) of what this means:

A woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages, to deserve the word. Mr. Darcy adds, To all this she must yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading.

They leave out needlework, both decorative and practical, another important component of a young lady’s education, as was letter-writing. Young ladies also learned French and Italian. In an ironic way, a young lady’s education could be more varied than a Regency gentleman’s. A Regency boy was expected to learn Latin and Greek and was confined to a Classical education. A young lady could read and study anything she liked. Jane Austen had the run of her father’s library. She never mentions Classical Literature in her books.

Has school started in your area yet? What are you doing for Labor Day?