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Thank you, Susan. What troubles me about all the reviews of this book is they all begin with how the author had never heard of Burney. Really? Radcliffe is treated as if she wrote very obscure stuff in remote storage in research libraries.. How could Romney think so of Radcliffe if she'd read up to p 3 of Northanger Abbey . You don't have to be an erudite 18th century scholar to have read these these authors (there's a Burney society) or Edgeworth or even Charlotte Smith. It's praised in terms of how much I'll learn about these books. But I've read many of them and about many of them and don't need beginners' descriptions. Ellen <smbiddle15@...> wrote:

It's in 3 parts, the script by Andrea Gib, the director is Aisling Walsh whose series are often excellent. It's done in the old-fashioned way: genuine scenes, no ratcheting up, acted subtly and yes Keeley Hawes is pitch perfect. But I was unexpectedly disappointed from which I learned something. Although Hornby's book is not an epistolary novel, it is so filled with letters, and they convey the heartblood of the story, to see it done so objectively lost something. They needed to do more filmic epistolarity -- I've seen it done by Nokes for Clarissa, by Andrew Davies for passages in Trollope's novels. It makes me want to reread the book, and I shall A kind Irish friend sent me a DVD copy ahead of time. Ellen

8ar outstanding; books in their own right. 4 borderline. 2 screenplays so good they are readable in their own right. Some screenplays made good movies nut are blueprints. And I've tried -- genuinely -- 24 more which are dreadful/trash ... Ellen I'm thinking of doing the same with Austen movies now that there are so many, and recent ones truly dreadful/trash.

It's a friendly newsletter-journal. Ellen ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: <jnleditor3@...> Date: Sat, Mar 1, 2025 at 7:17 PM Subject: FW: First Born-Digital Issue of The Johnsonian News Letter To: <jnleditor3@...> Dear Friends, The first born-digital issue of the Johnsonian News Letter, Volume LXXVI, No. 2, can now be viewed online at this address: https://johnsoniannewsletter.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/JNL-76-1-Spring-2025-03-01-25.pdf We also have an archive of back issues going back to 1940, at this address: https://johnsoniannewsletter.org/archive/ The JNL is now being put out twice a year and offered to all who wish to receive it, at no cost. Please forward this email to anybody you think might be interested in receiving the JNL. If you wish to be removed from our subscription/notification list, please respond to this email and we will remove you. Cordially, Matthew M. Davis Editor

I just came across a passage of narration in P&P Chapter 53, which I find to be a perfect example of narration which might at first, while reading or rereading quickly, seem like an objective narrator’s point of view, but which, upon close reading, is then seen to be Elizabeth’s (unacknowledged) point of view. It describes Mrs. Bennet’s impatience for Bingley, recently returned to Netherfield after his long absence, to somehow meet again with Jane: “Mr. Bingley arrived. Mrs. Bennet, through the assistance of servants, contrived to have the earliest tidings of it, that the period of anxiety and fretfulness on her side be as long as it could.” This is clearly Elizabeth’s sarcastic judgment that her mother’s desire to know the exact moment when Bingley arrives is masochistic, since knowing sooner will not make her mother’s wish come true any faster, it will only lengthen the time during which Mrs. Bennet frets, which will then be very unplesant for Elizabeth – and, as sarcasm goes, I think it’s pretty witty and funny. Arnie

I've just finished participating in a splendid zoom seminar (2 hours) from Cambridge UP. Dr Alison Hennigan is usually superb and she managed to elicit very interesting talk on P&P from the aspect of looking at indoor space as a home (or the opposite). I learned of a new sequel by Gill Hornby (who wrote Miss Austen), Godmersham Park. If I'm not mistaken, it was said Austen's friendship with Anne Sharpe is a feature of it https://tinyurl.com/3rzhxkk5 Ellen

Tell me if I'm wrong, but it occurred to me this morning that Emma is the one of the six completed novels which has no character who hunts nonhuman animals. Have I missed something? ARNIE

The mystery solved. She was autistic. A blog laying out a story, how I came to know about, what I still hope to write. The solution to this "mystery." She was autistic. https://reveriesunderthesignofausten.wordpress.com/2025/02/18/the-case-of-elizabeth-canning-1750s-london-mystery-solved-at-last-she-was-autistic/ Ellen

I just finished a movie “of the week” class at the Oscher Institute of Lifelong Learning at George Mason attached to George Mason, where we discussed this movie. It was brought home to me not only by the leaders of the class and other people in the class how important and hard courage is during such fascist and totalitarian regimes — and elsewhere in life. The kindness enacted in the film is at the risk of these peoples’ lives. It is also an act of courage (smaller) when you ae young in school to stand up against a crowd of bullies and align yourself with and defend the victim-scapegoat. So here I amend or add to my blog how we see remarkable courage in this film A modern instance was Bishop Budde in Washington, D.C preaching kindness and mercy to Trump on Inauguration day. Afterwards with his usual stone face he expressed outrage at her “nastiness.” I’ve no doubt she has received death threats. It took a few days for her church to defend her strongly, but they did https://ellenandjim.wordpress.com/2025/02/10/white-bird-a-wonder-story/ Ellen

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n02/katherine-rundell/why-children-s-books I find the above essay wonderfully cheering. If you cannot reach it, and want to, let me know, and I'll copy and paste it onto the list. Ellen

White bird, A wonder story for our times. Painfully relevant https://ellenandjim.wordpress.com/2025/02/10/white-bird-a-wonder-story/ I retire at long last, after 53 years, or my working life comes to an end 1972-2025 https://austenreveries.wordpress.com/2025/02/10/i-retire-at-long-last-after-53-years/ It took itme to get them both right, sorry for first hasty one Ellen

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/jan/25/gill-hornby-miss-austen-novel-tv-adaptation-jane-austen-created-the-six-best-novels-in-the-english-language Posted by Ellen

> > > I've just read an excellent review essay on Colm Toibin's Brooklyn and > Long Island, which it seems to me provides food for thought and talk on > James's Portrait of a Lady. It's in the NYRB for Feb 13, 2025 -- by Giles > Harvey > https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2025/02/13/bonds-and-gestures-long-island-colm-toibin/ If you cannot reach it (behind a paywall) let me know. I can copy and put it on the list posting space. Harvey makes several points of interest. First he suggests that Brooklyn is a post-text as I call these kinds of books ("sequel" inadequate, too broad, so many kinds) for a Portrait of a Lady. The underlying paradigm or whole structure of the two plot-designs are parallel. The comparison is illuminating. Then he talks of how an old fashioned reticence, an indirectness of speech and gestures is central to Toibin's power; thus the earlier books are often more compelling than the most recent. That's what really caught my eye, for I agree with it, and specifically in this review of how Long Island falls flat. Recently I came across a very irritated review of Toibin fiction in general, where the reviewer went so far as to compare a Toibin novel with Jane Austen's famous 6 Well, yes, thought I, and was elated to see this. The truth of the matter is despite ludicrous hagiography, for most contemporary male books, and genres like speculative lit her name would be the kiss of death. No longer is her name even an automatic way of recommending a woman's book, even when the other female author is so unalike as to make the idea preposterous. The reviewer had been, I suggest, bored. No thrills here ... Harvey does not conjure with Austen's name but he could, and his argument is contemporary frankness does Toibin in. My qualification would be that like Forster or other older queer male books (I don't know what's the latest label), reticence serves James very well but only up to a certain point. Then what the book is about is too hidden or the surface plot is misunderstood and betrays the book's meaning or takes too much precedence. Howard's End (which I cited in my musings) a case in point, where happily later in life Forster did write about it as dishonest and how he came to dislike the characters and ending more and more. Of course he gave up on longer domestic novels, though not science and short fantastical stories which he carried on writing almost to the end of his life; like Maurice, openly gay. I'm one of those Austen readers who find the hagiography gets in the way, so amused the falsifying complacency behind it are highlighted when we see really contemporary Austen-like novels don't find favor I digress. Harvey close reads Brooklyn & Long Island very interestingly. There is a line from Austen to James to Bowen to Toibin (which takes in some of Trollopoe's novels too). I am not sure what people are thanking me for, except maybe to be polite. What I wrote was an explanation (and yes justification by way of literary criticism) lest I be misunderstood and thought not to like James. work, which I do, though with qualifications. Ellen

As human beings with our wired type brains & aging bodies, we are condemned ever to look forward. Ravi, did you say you would like to read The Virginians or would try another long novel by Thackeray. Let me respond, it's only my new condition that makes me have to do less in literature so as to get to all I want to. I don't know if this would satisfy Tyler, but I am willing to read more of the non-novels, the shorter books and sketches more in the spirit of Vanity Fair The trouble is access. I own quit a number because years ago an older Victorian scholar gifted me with his 1909 set of Thackray's works -- the one edited by his daughter. Immense volumes of several works in some of them, with all his illustrations. But some is online as Gutenberg texts, and better some is i print in Everyman, Penguin used volumes. If anyone is interested, I'm game. These include his Shabby Genteel Story, Catherine, 18th century semi-history. I'll type out the titles of texts included. I have 3 such small volumes. Out of left field, I'm feeling bad the Walter Scott course at OLLI at York has only 3 people (not me), about to be cancelled. So I think I might really enjoy rereading Ivanhoe. I have a good paperback edition. It's been many years. After The Moonstone, anyone game for Scott's Ivanhoe? Jane Austen would have loved it, says she to Janeites too Ellen

This is the 2nd of the 3 novels written about the Elizabeth Canning case in the 20th century. Unlike Tey's Franchise Affair, Lillian de la Torre an 18th century scholar attempts to recreate the mid-18th century by using as much of words used at that time in court, in journals, in letters. Not as polished or compelling as the Tey 20th century Franchise Affair (by a professional novelist), but though it's obvious de la Torre has decided Elizabeth lied (but cannot find any transgressive sex, or any evidence Elizabeth was anywhere but the attic she claimed), de la Torre brings home what it was to live in 18th century poverty, no connections, mostly illiterate-- and today we may add disabled from autism, though very much protected by her mother. I am looking forward to her portraits of Fielding and others ... I think Jane Austen would have known of this case. It's intriguing to imagine what she might have thought, how she might have put it. She sided with Caroline "because she was a woman". It arrived yesterday, placed on my stoop ... The world I live in is made up of two sets of people. Those who deliver things, and those who accept delivery It's not intriguing (choose another word) that today in the US senate a man has been nominated for one of the most responsible and consequential agencies or departments in the US govt and will probably be accepted despite his manifest lack of any experience, and occasional incompetence precisely because among his many vices is that of sexual predation Ellen

When Mr. Woodhouse dies, am I correct that the most likely inheritance will be that Emma and Isabella will inherit Hartfield 50:50, and further, if they are each then married to a Knightley, then their husbands will, as husbands, inherit what their wives just inherited, and therefore the Knightley brothers will in that scenario own both Hartfield and Donwell Abbey 50:50 between them? ARNIE

Mr Gardiner owns a big business and lives in London. He is arguably a Cit. But does he own the land and buildings his business occupies? Or rent them? If he owns them, does that make him gentry?

P.S. re that same passage in Chapter 46: “They were to be off as soon as possible. “But what is to be done about Pemberley?” cried Mrs. Gardiner. “John told us Mr. Darcy was here when you sent for us;—was it so?” “Yes; and I told him we should not be able to keep our engagement. *That* is all settled.” “What is all settled?” repeated the other, as she ran into her room to prepare. “And are they upon such terms as for her to disclose the real truth? Oh, that I knew how it was!” *But wishes were vain; or, at best, could serve only to amuse her in the hurry and confusion of the following hour.*” In rereading that sentence in its larger context, above, I suddenly realized tonight that there is yet a third sense or meaning of “to amuse”, which makes sense, in addition to what at first appeared to be only two choices: “to entertain” or “to mystify”. Now I see a third possible sense, which is actually the final variant in Samuel Johnson’s mid-18th century dictionary definition: “ to distract”. It makes interpreting that passage even more complicated and interesting. Here's the third interpretation I see: Mrs. Gardiner’s frantic wish to know whether her suspicion (that Darcy and Elizabeth were already engaged) was “the real truth” was in vain, because, rightly, she didn’t feel comfortable just asking Elizabeth directly, especially right then when Elizabeth was in obvious distress about the Lydia-Wickham snafu, and its repercussions. However, at least during the hour of hurried packing, Mrs. Gardiner finds welcome distraction from worry about damage to the Bennet family arising from Lydia’s disappearance with Wickham, by dwelling for an hour in the positive fantasy of learning “the real truth”, i.e. that Elizabeth being engaged to Darcy. It’s not particularly logical thinking on Mrs. G’s part, but that is Austen’s acute psychological insight on display. I.e., Mrs. Gardiner seems to be in denial about the seriousness of the potential damage to the Bennet family; and so her fantasy provides “amusement”, i.e., distraction and diversion from worry. This third meaning of “to amuse” makes it even more curious that Austen chose this word to describe Mrs. Gardiner’s state of mind at this dramatic moment, rather than a word with only one meaning –– especially because Austen had used that same word "amusement" 4 chapters earlier: “The Gardiners stayed only one night at Longbourn, and set off the next morning with Elizabeth in pursuit of novelty and amusement. One enjoyment was certain—that of suitableness as companions; a suitableness which comprehended health and temper to bear inconveniences—cheerfulness to enhance every pleasure—and affection and intelligence, which might supply it among themselves if there were disappointments abroad.” The main point of the trip was to “amuse” i.e., distract Elizabeth from her sour grapes over Wickham’s abrupt switch of his romantic attentions to Miss King, and also perhaps from her upset over having her BFF move far away not long before. I still wonder about Austen picking such an ambiguous word in these two instances, when she could have made the meaning of these passages much more immediately clear (to use her phrase from her January 1813 letter about P&P). ARNIE On Sun, Jan 5, 2025 at 2:53 PM Arnie Perlstein via groups.io <arnieperlstein@...> wrote: > Thank you, Carolyn, Dorothy, and Tamar for your replies, which are fine as > far as they go. However, none of you addressed what I find to be the > curious part of the passage I quoted, which was the following sentence > describing Mrs. Gardiner’s thoughts as she got ready to leave the inn: > > “But wishes were vain; or, at best, could serve only to amuse her in the > hurry and confusion of the following hour.” > > > > When you stop and think about it, what in the world would Mrs Gardiner find > amusing in the Bennet family crisis she has just learned from Elizabeth, > that had caused the cancellation of their planned re-visit to Pemberley? > > To answer that question, here are some relevant data regarding word usage > in P&P, which I believe shed som

At the very end of Ch. 46 of P&P, we read the following narrative passage right after Elizabeth reads Jane’s two letters describing the Lydia-Wickham fracas: “She was wild to be at home—to hear, to see, to be upon the spot to share with Jane in the cares that must now fall wholly upon her, in a family so deranged; a father absent, a mother incapable of exertion, and requiring constant attendance; and though almost persuaded that nothing could be done for Lydia, her uncle’s interference seemed of the utmost importance, and till he entered the room the misery of her impatience was severe. Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner had hurried back in alarm, supposing, by the servant’s account, that their niece was taken suddenly ill; but satisfying them instantly on that head, she eagerly communicated the cause of their summons, reading the two letters aloud, and dwelling on the postscript of the last with trembling energy. Though Lydia had never been a favourite with them, Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner could not but be deeply affected. Not Lydia only, but all were concerned in it; and after the first exclamations of surprise and horror, Mr. Gardiner readily promised every assistance in his power. Elizabeth, though expecting no less, thanked him with tears of gratitude; and all three being actuated by one spirit, everything relating to their journey was speedily settled. They were to be off as soon as possible.” And now comes a part I had never noticed before, which is that, temporarily, we find ourselves in Mrs. Gardiner’s head. With that background, does any of you notice anything strange in Mrs. Gardiner’s reaction in the following excerpt, which immediately follows the above: “But what is to be done about Pemberley?” cried Mrs. Gardiner. “John told us Mr. Darcy was here when you sent for us;—was it so?” “Yes; and I told him we should not be able to keep our engagement. *That* is all settled.” “What is all settled?” repeated the other, as she ran into her room to prepare. “And are they upon such terms as for her to disclose the real truth? Oh, that I knew how it was!” But wishes were vain; or, at best, could serve only to amuse her in the hurry and confusion of the following hour. Had Elizabeth been at leisure to be idle, she would have remained certain that all employment was impossible to one so wretched as herself…” ARNIE