Category: Politics
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Tough World for Jane Austen
In reflecting back on my first work of fiction on the life of Jane Austen, I knew I had my Jane Austen novel when I read a seemingly unrelated work: Richard Holmes’ The Age of Wonder. This history of scientific and industrial developments during the period spanning Austen’s life went far beyond “three or four…
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Pride and Prejudice and Immigration – An excerpt from a modernization
Happy Thursday-before-Thanksgiving everyone! Having just passed the election, I thought I would highlight a slightly older book of mine that is oddly apropos of the moment. I wrote it in 2017-18, but it is set during President Trump’s first run for office. I didn’t expect it to ever be as relevant as it was at…
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Fresh Thoughts on the 2024 AGM
It is ever so difficult to characterize an annual general meeting (AGM) of the Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA). There are so many different elements—local tours, specialty events, sometimes a major evening event, the plenary speeches open to all attendees. Multiple breakout sessions go simultaneously for two days so that no one person…
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Woolf’s Fascination with Austen
Virginia Woolf is famous for two remarks about Jane Austen. In The Common Reader, Woolf says that Austen’s juvenilia and unfinished works “offer the best criticism of the masterpieces. Here her difficulties are more apparent, and the method she took to overcome them less artfully concealed.” A lack of development in these works, she remarks,…
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How Did the Regency Upper Class Stay So Thin?
After all, we’ve seen those 3-tiered tea trays layered with cakes and sweets…
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First and Last of Mary Shelley’s Humankind
Mary Shelley holds the distinction of having written—two hundred years ago—the story of the first of a new kind of human, who is created and animated by science, and the last of the old order of humanity, which is felled by a pandemic. The first novel, her well-known Frankenstein (1818), invented the science-fiction genre. The…
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Earls in Regency England: Aristocracy and Responsibilities
Learn all about earls and what makes them different from other members of the British Peerage, especially during the Regency era.
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Final Look at Austen Books, Military
I didn’t intend to write multiple times on inexpensive Austen books, particularly those produced for the modern military. But it turns out this is the third and final effort at the topic. … Because Jane Austen was generally well received by the scholarly community from early on, beginning with Sir Walter Scott, it is easy…
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Writing an Author’s Truth in Austenesque Fiction
What makes writing Austenesque variations exciting is that, in the hands of an author ready to explore truths that informed Jane Austen’s life and those of her characters, we are no longer constrained by the epochal notions enshrined in film or video. Rather, fresh approaches are sought in fantasy (Maria Grace and Abigail Reynolds, for…
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Remember, Remember, The Fifth of November
As I used Meryton’s Bonfire Night for a scene in Mistaken Premise, and as the history of Guy Fawkes and his co-conspirators tie directly into the history of King James I of England, VI of Scotland, I thought I would share the history of the Gunpowder Plot in honour of Guy Fawkes’ Day on Sunday.…