Two hundred fifty years ago, one of my favorite authors was born. Jane Austen fans are celebrating her birthday with style and fanfare. The iconic romance author is being given parties and new films. Miss Austen, a new Masterpiece Theatre series premiered on May 5.
The delightful French-English rom-com Jane Austen Wrecked My Life revives the great tradition of storytelling with Austen-like wit, satire, and happy ending. Mix-ups and mishaps, costumes and contemporary. Here’s a trailer: The movie premieres on May 25.
What keeps Jane Austen relevant? Two centuries and a half is a long time ago, but some things never change, especially in the areas of love and romance and class systems.
My Own Jane
Jane Austen Time Traveler puts Jane into the century where I think she really belongs—our time—and even takes her briefly into the future.
The mysterious time travel guide George St. James is her escort, as he is for all time travelers in my Timegathering Series. George brings Jane Austen into the 21st century to improve her love life and give her the courage to keep writing her books.
Do we think she’d write her romantic stories of genteel class warfare the same way if she’d visited our time? I think the romance novel category her books helped spawn would give her pause. Much as I enjoy a well-written romance, I can’t imagine Jane being inspired by them. I wouldn’t call her a cynic, but a realist. Especially where the relations between marriageable young women and gentlemen of means are concerned. In her time, as in ours, Jane spots the commerce in the marital transaction. She writes against it, to be sure, but she is inventing no Disney heroines, and even her clueless ingenues have more wit and discernment and ultimate good sense. Yes, even Marianne in Sense and Sensibility gets a clue in the end. In fact, as I read S&S it’s a cautionary tale about romantic emotions overpowering a woman’s practicality.
On another note, Jane and animals
Jane loved animals. As so many authors do. Here ‘s an article about the pets that inspired some famous authors. And here are some famous poems about dogs. And my favorite poet-with-dog, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, wrote this poem about her dog, Flush.
Time Travel Book Recommendation
While I don’t think my Timegathering Series invented a novel way of traveling through time, Ashley Poston’s novel The Seven Year Slip does. I recommend it for an absorbing, believable time slip story.