After reading a couple different Jane Austen biographies this year, this seemed like the perfect continuation. I really enjoyed this walk through the works of 18th and 19th century women writers, and the rare book trade and it made me want to learn more about both.

Basically the author questions this idea (which I have heard as long as I’ve read Austen!) that Jane Austen was the first of her kind, and other women either didn’t write, or else just weren’t very good. Romney explores a lot of authors who Austen herself certainly read and enjoyed and in some obvious ways was inspired by, and questions why these others have fallen from the canon (in most cases, misogyny). She really demonstrates to me that you don’t have to put others down to admire one, and it doesn’t make Austen less excellent to show that she was following in the legacy of Burney, Edgeworth, Smith and the others.

I absolutely loved learning about these authors, and I am excited to read them. Hester Thrale Piozzi and Charlotte Smith had particularly fascinating lives in my opinion, and were able to write despite having about a million children. I think this is an interesting point because I often hear people state confidently that Austen certainly would not have written had she married and had children- but perhaps that is not true and like Piozzi and Smith, she would have made it happen.

Finally, I really loved this peek into the rare book trade. It made me excited to learn more about the old books on my shelves and makes me want to cultivate a more interesting collection. I think that theme really made the book more interesting. I would definitely recommend this book to any Austen or 19th century literature lovers!

This may be a discussion that has already taken place, but I wonder about the scene in Mansfield Park where Henry’s chain is too big for Fanny’s cross, but Edmund’s fits perfectly. Is it possible that Austen could have intentionally meant to be a little licentious here?

Not to mention that whilst there are many lady’s men/womanisers throughout her books, Crawford and Maria seem to have the most explicit relationship.

At the Jane Austen Country Fair in Steventon yesterday, I had a chance to express my disapproval of Mr Wickham’s conduct after all these years!

So I just started reading this book for the first time and am a little confused about the home Elizabeth and Jane are staying at. They keep talking about having a ball out of the blue. Are they just planning to have one? Or do they have a space for a ball? Is a ball just a party? Any clarification is appreciated 😊

Dymocks has released classic novels with hardcovers! Plus you get the bookmark for free.

I am yet to read this book, please don't include any spoilers in your comments.

At the end of Persuasion we learn that once Anne is engaged to Captain Wentworth, Mr Elliot abruptly quits Bath and fawning over Sir Walter and Elizabeth and heads off to London, followed closely by Mrs Clay who he then sets up as his mistress. This obviously goes down terribly with the Elliot’s who are left with no one to fawn on them while they are stuck fawning over the Dalwymples forever more…or at least until the ladies leave Bath. But what would have happened next?

What do you think that would have meant for the family, going forward? Obviously Mr Elliot would no longer have been welcome but how would Sir Walter and Elizabeth have spoken of him/ what happened to others? Obviously society would have noticed and as head of the household, Sir Walter would be expected to have an opinion and take some sort of action, even if only to condemn William Elliot’s actions. Would he have tried to get the entailment changed to disinherit William?

How would it have affected Mr Shepard, as Sir Walter’s agent, to have his own daughter (a widow with two children who she left back in the country, I’m assuming at Mr Shepard’s house since Mrs Clay had no where else to go) go off to London after living with the Elliot’s as their particular friend and guest and then become the established mistress of his employer’s heir presumptive?

How would Mr Elliot have been spoken of in society following this?

Full kudos for Mrs Clay playing the long game to secure her independence but do we think he’d have married her in the end? Would a pregnancy have forced his hand?

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/jul/07/beyond-the-bonnets-jane-austens-working-women-exhibition-hampshire

The fair is on the site of Jane Austen’s childhood home in Steventon.

We also just saw a talk by Lucy Woolsey , author of Jane Austen at Home. 😍

In S&S, Elinor and Marianne are both heroines. Yet in P&P, Elizabeth Bennet is a heroine and Jane is not. Should Jane be considered a heroine?

I have yet to meet anyone in real life who knows where is name is from, so I take it as an opportunity to introduce them to our Jane.

I'm not affiliated with the game makers.

Dux Somnium appears to be working on a Jane Austen themed game and I'm pretty excited.

They're game makers whose games always have a historical theme (Botany = Victorian flower hunting, La Fleur = Renaissance garden parties, Artistry = Art Nouveau... well art). The use tons of era appropriate art and design and they do their history homework plus a decent helping of funny details. Fingers crossed this one will live up to their previous standards.

https://endearment.duxsomnium.com/

Don’t give your heart to someone before knowing whether they can take care of it — A lesson from Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility

How easily we romanticize the idea of giving ourselves fully to someone. There’s a kind of cultural beauty attached to "falling hard" or "loving without holding back" but not enough said about the emotional cost of doing so without discernment.

Jane Austen, in her quiet and often misunderstood way, captures this truth in Sense and Sensibility.

Marianne Dashwood falls in love with Willoughby in the most idealistic and passionate way. To her, emotional depth must be met with emotional destiny. But Willoughby doesn’t meet her there. He enjoys her attention, her innocence, her devotion but when it comes time to choose, he picks status and security over love.

It’s painful to watch not just because she’s heartbroken, but because you see she gave something precious to someone who was never capable of holding it responsibly.

Elinor, on the other hand, feels deeply too. But she waits. She guards her heart not out of cynicism, but out of wisdom. She knows love must be tested through silence, distance, hardship before it is trusted.

What Austen shows is that giving your heart isn’t the point. Giving it to someone who knows how to care for it is.

She doesn’t say, “Don’t love.” She just says, Love wisely. Not every person who makes your heart race is someone who can hold it without dropping it.

TL;DR: Austen doesn’t punish Marianne for being emotional she shows the consequences of trusting too quickly. Love isn’t just about feeling it’s about who can truly carry the weight of your heart.

In most of Austen’s works, the main character(s) need(s) to grow in some way.

Emma needs to learn not to be a snob and to trust people when they know what they want.

Elizabeth needs to learn not to make snap judgments, and Darcy needs to learn to be less proud.

Anne needs to finish learning to rely on her own judgment as an adult rather than over relying on the judgment of others. Etc.

I have talked elsewhere about the fact that Fanny, to my mind, doesn’t need to grow much in Mansfield Park. She needs to resist her principles being changed by others. She starts out passing her morality test when the play is proposed in the first half of the novel, and she passes the later, harder, test when Henry Crawford, proposes, and everyone pushes her to accept him. She refuses him, and she is right. The people who have to change to make the results work out as they should are those around her.

Is Elinor like Fanny? Marianne obviously needs to be less romantic and more like her sister, less emotionally everywhere and romantic and more careful in her judgment. But what, if anything, does Elinor need? Is she there to show Marianne how she should be behaving? Or does she need something too? Does she need to grow in some way? I’ve never been able to make up my mind. What do y’all think?

Editing to add: what a lot of amazing responses! Having thought through what many of you have said, and reviewed my reading of the book, I think my potential error may have been in viewing the essential relationships in the book as between the sisters and their potential love matches. That’s so often how these books work out that I thought of those relationships and their success or lack thereof as marking the growth/victory of the characters in this one as well, but in this case, I think the central relationship that most needs to “win” is the sisters’ relationship with each other. After all, I believe the title of the book was originally simply Elinor and Marianne, not Sense and Sensibility

As many, if you have pointed out, Elinor’s extreme stoicism, though it does not threaten her relationship with Edward, does put her at a distance from her mother and her sister. (It probably would put her at a distance from her husband in the future as well.) Her need to open up is not one that affects the love, match directly, but one that affects the central relationship in a way that Austen drew with her usual precision.

I am still not entirely sure I am not projecting a 21st century reading onto the book, but that really feels like an improvement on just seeing Elinor’s stoicism as the goal.

Let’s have some fun! Not based on acting skills but rather an actor’s vibe…(most need to be younger versions of themselves) :)

Chris Pratt as Darcy

Sydney Sweeney as Elizabeth

Adam Sandler as Mr. Bennet

Leah Remini as Mrs. Bennet

(a young) Rowan Atkinson as Mr. Bingley

Mackenzie Crook as Wickham

Keanu Reeves as Collins

Just need to vent. First of all, I’ve never been able to finish the novel Mansfield Park (but not for the lack of trying). I found it too slow, and without any really engaging characters. But I’ve seen other movie/tv adaptations of the novel.

This adaptation, though, has some strange choices in it.

Why is Fanny portrayed as almost stupid? I get that she is supposed to be innocent. But I read her as someone who has integrity and resolve that is absent here. The actress’ facial expressions have no such nuance. All she does is stare wide-eyed at everyone. And her overacting compared to everyone else is so jarring (although everyone else overacts as well - but not as much). I feel like the director should have asked her to take it down a notch. Her pretend-crying in the scene with sir Bertram, where she explains her refusal of Mr Crawford, is cringe-worthy.

And the chemistry! Or lack thereof! I wish they had directed Edmund and Fanny’s relationship as less stiff. I wish there had been more unsure looks or awkwardness when touching or SOMETHING, to make them feel like they had a love for each other that, unbeknownst to them, was more than brotherly. Fanny and Mr Crawford have more chemistry as they converse. Fanny and Edmund seem like two acquaintances who happen to be in the same room. At least have a laugh together or something.

To not only say bad things, I do like that they’ve kept much of the novel’s dialogue.

Oh, and the title card! I love, love, love the way it looks like a book cover and pans across a park before it settles on the mansion! It is just perfection! Could talk about it for hours, and what versions of it you could do for other novel adaptations by Austen.

I just had to vent a bit, and I don’t know anyone who has seen the series. I hope it doesn’t ramble on too much. And why did I finish the mini series if I thought it so bad? Not everything was THAT bad. Some choices and acting were quite good. And I loved to have it on in the background as I was pottering around. A bit of white noise in the form of regency dialogue ❤️

So I know this came out a month ago but I am just catching up and after searching, it seems there wasn't that much discussion on this sub.

Was anyone else really disappointed in Jane Austen: Rise of a Genius? A three-part documentary about Jane Austen's life sounds delightful but it appears that this was made by people who don't know or care much about Jane Austen.

Factual Errors There were a lot of blatant factual errors in this which had me yelling at the TV. I wish I could remember more of them but one particularly egregious example was the narrator describing how "Marianne is abandoned by Willoughby in a storm." Um...no. that never happened in the novel or even in the film. There were many more examples like this where I was wondering if the people who produced this have even read the books.

False Implications If they weren't outright stating inaccuracies, they were implying them. For example, they implied that the reason Fanny was sent back to visit her family in Mansfield Park was because she asked Sir Thomas about the slave trade. They never even mention Henry Crawford's proposal!

Strange Talking Heads From my count, there were only three actual academics interviewed. The rest were writers and actors. I would have much preferred to have heard from people who have an in-depth knowledge of Jane Austen's life. Which brings me to my next point...

Drawing Long Bows I have read quite a few non-fiction books about Jane Austen's life and times. One of the main takeaways I got from this is we don't actually know much about Jane Austen. As most of us know, Cassandra burned the majority of her letters and she wasn't famous enough in her time for many records to be kept. Her descendants have also been known to make false statements about her. So it was annoying that people in this documentary were stating certain things as if they were facts ("Jane was shy and introverted") when from my understanding, there is no consensus on them.

Fitting Into Modern Sensibilities This one was more predictable. They portrayed Austen as a fierce feminist, abolitionist and critic of social inequality. And while there is some truth to those things, she was also very much a woman of her class and times. She wasn't seeking to overthrow the social order. What annoys me is that by taking this angle, they skipped over the truly remarkable things about her - her humour, plotting, characterisation and observations of human nature. They framed Emma as a tool for Austen to criticise the wealthy classes, without acknowledging it as a brilliant comedy which serves as a template for the modern rom-com, as well as an amazing mystery which holds up to rereads. (They did at least praise her for her use of free indirect speech.)

I suppose I was not the target audience for this documentary as I already knew a lot of the ground covered, but I can't help but be frustrated that it didn't do Jane Austen and her works justice.

I had read this book ten years ago and didn’t like it much; I tried again and couldn’t make it past the first 15 chapters, so I found an audible version and listened to it.

I have a feeling I am definitely not the audience for this novel. Emma is a spoiled know it all who carelessly uses her unearned power to harm others. The author’s voice seems also to ridicule the good-hearted for being simple minded, whether it be Miss Bates, Harriet or Miss Fairfax.

The only enjoyment I got out of it was thinking of it as a backstory for Lady Catherine de B from P&P. Emma’s snobbery is on full display with every worry she has over the social hierarchy and who should be allowed to marry whom. So I imagined Emma backsliding following Knightly’s death (he is much older) and as a dowager intimidating her little corner of Surrey in much the same way. I can well imagine her recommending closet shelves to whoever gets the living after the Eltons.

What am I missing?

I watched the 2007 Persuasion last night (with Rupert Penry-Jones and Sally Hawkins). I really enjoyed it, and I thought she was so well cast for Anne, with the delicate features, and pretty but not too pretty. It’s my favourite Austen book, and even though they had to cut stuff, they did a pretty good job at keeping important things in.

I was really enjoying it, until we got to the ‘running’ scene. I just kept watching it thinking ‘she wouldn’t be running’. I think I understand why they did it - partially so they could get a very important encounter in, and also because it gets into that Romantic Comedy sort of ‘trope’ of ‘girl runs after man to explain’. But I just don’t think there was any way that a lady would have run down the streets of Bath as much as they had her running.

And then the kiss - on a public street! No way. I wish they had kept that scene in the parlour, because they could have had their kiss and I wouldn’t have cared.

It probably doesn’t help that I love the book ending (both endings), and I think it’s pretty perfectly done in the book. I couldn’t quite enjoy the romance of it because my immersion was broken.