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Jane Austen, who died at 41 years of age on the 18th of July, 1817, might be one of the most conservative writers ever. "Sense and Sensibility" (published in 1811) is set in the 1790's in southern England, while the Reign Of Terror gripped France and while Vermont, Kentucky, and Tennessee became states in America. A quote: “I wish, as well as everybody else, to be perfectly happy; but, like everybody else, it must be in my own way.” (Sense And Sensibility) “I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational...

A stunning Georgian townhouse, once used to film a 1995 adaptation of Jane Austen's Persuasion, is now on the market for £4.5 million. The Grade II listed property in Bath was used in the 1995 BBC recreation of the infamous period author's novel, starring Ciaran Hinds and Amanda Root. It flaunts its own ballroom, library and ornate dining room, perfect for entertaining guests with Regency-era grandeur.

As American educational institutions continue to be called into question, a North Korean defector fears the United States' future "is as bleak as North Korea" after she attended one of the country's most prestigious universities. Yeonmi Park has experienced plenty of struggle and hardship, but she does not call herself a victim. One of several hundred North Korean defectors settled in the United States, Park, 27, transferred to Columbia University from a South Korean university in 2016 and was deeply disturbed by what she found. "I expected that I was paying this fortune, all this time and energy, to learn...

The attempted denigration of Jane Austen reveals how upscale, white elites view caring about anti-racism as a marker of status.The woke may regret going after Jane Austen. Last month it was reported that exhibits at the Jane Austen Museum were being revamped as staff are“re-evaluating Jane Austen’s place in ‘Regency-era colonialism’ in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests.” This attempt to evaluate Austen according to the American upper class’s current racial obsessions mostly reveals the blind spots those obsessions encourage. Many of Austen’s fans were furious at this attempted denigration of the great authoress. This anger was intensified by...

As we approach a holiday in which an almost single mother and a step-father welcome a special baby born during a forced journey to comply with a government order, it’s interesting to ponder how women’s interests have been evolved from empowering women in the context of their lives and families to focusing on things that ensure they don’t have families at all.Today’s mainstream feminists work to enforce an agenda for women that has been reduced to a single issue and one group of people (not necessarily female): abortion and any who pledge allegiance to that cause. First wave feminists like...

She has small, unexceptional features and stares blankly into space. A lace bonnet keeps her dark curls in place, save for a few neat strands that frame her face. Behind her is a large country house and an illustration of Elizabeth Bennet, her most famous creation. This is the airbrushed image of Jane Austen on the new British £10 note which will be released on July 18th, the bicentenary of her death: just one example of how she has been reshaped and re-imagined on her path to becoming a global literary sensation. Austen was born on December 16th 1775, one...

Almost exactly 200 years to the day of Jane Austen’s death in 1817, a masterly comic letter written by the author to her favourite niece will come to sale for the very first time at Sotheby’s London on 11th July with an estimate of £80,000-100,000. The celebrated novelist, whose own literature has remained the subject of critique for over two centuries, is here seen exercising her own critical opinion of another writer’s work in a light-hearted jeu d’espirit which exudes not only Austen’s supreme intellect, but also her comic charm, Art Daily said. Dating from 29-30 October 1812, a critical...

Everyone knows that good Christian girls love Jane Austen.But perhaps not everyone knows that good Catholic Christian girls also love St. Thomas Aquinas.That is why I had to have mama fetch my smelling salts when the Masked Thomist linked me to a whole series of posts on Austen, Aquinas and Aristotle at the Dominicana blog. In a series of 5 posts, Br. Aquinas Beale argues that, There is something more than romance and drama in the novels of Jane Austen, namely a systematic approach to leading the good and happy life. It’s true you know.Austen’s novels are a perfect education in...

Jane Austen's "own darling child" Pride and Prejudice is celebrating its 200th birthday. Although out of copyright and available for free on e-readers, it is estimated that Pride and Prejudice sells up to 50,000 copies each year in the UK alone.

A new novel that retells the story of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice from the point of view of its servants has been sold around the world. Longbourn, by Jo Baker, was snapped up by US and UK publishers last week. "Jane Austen was my first experience of grown-up literature," said Baker. "But as I read and re-read her books, I began to become aware that if I'd been living at the time, I wouldn't have got to go to the ball; I would have been stuck at home with the sewing." The 39-year-old British author said she drew her...

Culture Challenge of the Week:  Finding A Good Man Call it the lament of the young, single woman: there are no good men left. Or if there are, where are they? And how can a young woman pursue a healthy, marriage-minded relationship in a singles culture of casual sex and perpetual adolescence? In her new book, The Jane Austen Guide to Happily Ever After (Regnery Publishing, 2012), Elizabeth Kantor provides some answers. She writes, “Of course it’s no secret that modern mating rituals have gone badly wrong.” And indeed they have: the number of cohabitating couples has doubled in the...

Nearly 200 years after Jane Austen‘s untimely death, crime novelist Lindsay Ashford has come up with a new explanation: arsenic poisoning. Austen, the English author of such classic novels as “Pride and Prejudice” and “Sense and Sensibility,” died in 1817 at age 41. Her death has been attributed to everything from cancer to Addison’s disease. But Ashford, who moved to Austen’s village of Chawton three years ago and started writing her new crime novel in the former home of Austen’s brother, stumbled across another possibility — that Austen died of arsenic poisoning. ... Ashford recognized that Austen’s symptoms could be...

An Unforgiving Temper By Gail Head Foy anyone familiar with and a fan of Jane Austen's works, particularly her novel, "Pride and Prejudice," Gail Head's, "An Unforgiving Temper," is a must-have and must-read. Imagine: What if Elizabeth never went to Pemberley? What if the events in Ramsgate ended in an explosive conflict that set Elizabeth and Fitzwilliam's course on a different path that was filled with implacable resentment and filled others with a rapacious thirst for revenge? "An Unforgiving Temper," is the captivating story of what Darcy and Elizabeth's journey might have been. This 502 page, riveting novel is...

The polished prose of Emma and Persuasion was the product of an interventionist editor, an Oxford University academic has found. Professor Kathryn Sutherland of the Faculty of English Language and Literature made the discovery while studying a collection of 1,100 original handwritten pages of Austen's unpublished writings for the Jane Austen Fiction Manuscripts Digital Edition. The project, led by Professor Sutherland in collaboration with the Bodleian Libraries, King's College London and the British Library with funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council has reunited in a free-to-access online archive all Jane Austen's handwritten fiction manuscripts for the very first...

We were no longer "good society."

London, England (CNN) -- It is a truth universally acknowledged -- or nearly so -- that Jane Austen, the author of "Pride and Prejudice," died of a rare illness called Addison's disease, which robs the body of the ability to make critical hormones. Katherine White doesn't believe it. White, herself a sufferer of Addison's disease, has studied Austen's own letters and those of her family and friends, and concluded that key symptoms just don't match what's known about the illness. The disease -- a failure of the adrenal glands -- was unknown in Austen's day, first having been identified nearly...

These days, America is menaced by zombie banks and zombie computers. What’s next, a zombie Jane Austen? In fact, yes. Minor pandemonium ensued in the blogosphere this month after Quirk Books announced the publication of “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies,” an edition of Austen’s classic juiced up with “all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie mayhem” by a Los Angeles television writer named Seth Grahame-Smith. (First line: “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.”) Then, last week, the monster alert at Meryton went from orange to red when it...

Transportation officials in Texas are scrambling to prevent hackers from changing messages on digital road signs after one sign in Austin was altered to read, "Zombies Ahead." Chris Lippincott, director of media relations for the Texas Department of Transportation, confirmed that a portable traffic sign at Lamar Boulevard and West 15th Street, near the University of Texas at Austin, was hacked into during the early hours of Jan. 19. "It was clever, kind of cute, but not what it was intended for," said Lippincott, who saw the sign during his morning commute. "Those signs are deployed for a reason —...

Feminist professors go ballistic when observers such as your humble correspondent report that the constituency they are appealing to finds women’s studies irrelevant, if not ridiculous. “Does the typical woman graduating from college have the information she needs to make decisions that will improve her chances for long-term health and happiness?,” the Independent Women’s Forum’s Carrie Lukas asked in a recent column in The Washington Examiner. “Probably not.” “Chances are she’s been given a lot of bad information—much of it in the name of political correctness.” Lukas, author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Women, Sex, and Feminism, will speak...

British novelist Austen's real life love story is set to be retold in the upcoming film Becoming Jane. Becoming Jane will tell the story of her doomed love for an Irish lawyer when she was 20. The role of Jane will be played by Anne Hathaway, one of the wives of the heroes in the highly acclaimed gay cowboy film Brokeback Mountain. Maggie Smith and Julie Walters are to co-star in the movie, reports Contactmusic. The film will tell the story of how Austen met and fell in love with Tom Lefroy, a barrister who has been credited with inspiring...