Tag Archives: Jane Austen

The Paperback Road Trip

Road trip reading is not restricted to Jack Kerouac’s On the Road or Fanny Trollope’s Domestic Habits of Americans.

I prefer Jane Austen. And I always take a rather scruffy paperback.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a woman on a road trip needs an inexpensive, even disposable, paperback that will fit in a purse, backpack, or bike pannier.  She needs to leave the “nice” editions on the shelves, because road copies get smudged and dog-eared.

Jane Austen’s novels are not travel books, but all the heroines except Emma travel.  They ride in carriages and other quaint 19th-century vehicles to London, Bath,  Derbyshire, villages, and huge country houses.  

In  Persuasion, Austen’s sexiest book, Anne Elliot, the unmarried heroine, is constantly traveling.  She blooms on a visit to her sister Mary in the village of Kellynch. Later, when Anne joins her spendthrift father and pompous older sister in Bath, a romantic spark is reignited between Anne and Captain Wentworth, who were in love seven years ago.

One of the more attractive cheap editions is the Modern Library Torchbearers paperback above ($7.00). The introduction is by Uzma Jalzluddin, and more important, it has an attractive cover!

You should also check out the cheap Bantams and Signet editions of Persuasion in the $5 – $6 price range. 

Signet edition

2 Pride and Prejudice.  The Bantam mass market paperback ($5.95) is plain but sturdy.   It  lacks an introduction and notes, but who needs them on a road trip?

The mass market Signet paperback of P&P  ($5.35) is comparable, but it has an introduction by Margaret Drabble and an Afterword by Eloise Janes.

Modern Library edition (2001)

3 Emma.  A 2001 Modern Library paperback  ($9) strays from Modern Library’s drab trademark brown cover by substituting a flashy orange cover with a charming illustration by Jillian Ditner.  It also has an introduction by A. Walton Litz, notes, and a reading guide.

The Signet edition ($5.41) has an introduction by Margaret Drabble and an Afterword by Sabrina Jeffries.  

Bantam

The Bantam edition ($4.65)  has no frills, but does the job.

4 Mansfield Park.  The Wordsworth edition ($3.95) is the cheapest.  This budget publisher always provides an introduction and notes.

Wordsworth edition

If you want to pay a few dollars more, the Penguin edition ($7.95) has an introduction by Kathryn Sutherland and notes.

5 Sense and Sensibility,  I broke the paperback rule when I discovered the Puffin in Bloom hardback edition  ($11) of Sense and Sensibility.  This is smaller than most paperbacks.  No frills – no introduction or notes – but it survived the trip, and it is now one of my prized go-to editions. 

6 Northanger Abbey. The Dover Thrift edition seems to be out-of-print, but you can buy used editions online for $5 and up.

Be sure to compare prices of Signet, Penguin, Bantam, Modern Library, Wordsworth, and Puffin in Bloom before you pick out the right road book for you.

Great Fall Reads: Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” & Robert Macfarlane’s “Is a River Alive?”

On a recent vacation, I was fascinated by Fanny Burney’s Cecilia, a smart 1,003- page novel about the perils of being rich and female in the 18th century. 

And then Burney pointed me in the direction of Jane Austen, when, on page 930, she repeated the phrase PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (all caps) three times. 

Yes, Jane Austen took the clever title from Burney’s Cecilia. 

Pride and Prejudice is Austen’s most popular novel, and  perhaps it is her best. Austen herself said modestly that P&P was “rather too light & bright & sparkling,” but her fans are enraptured by the romantic comedy and witty dialogue.  

She borrows tropes from her favorite 18th-century novels and adapts then neatly to fit domestic fiction.  But she is never conventional:  she veers off course during love scenes, or, in Mansfield Park, goes so far as to make Edmund, who is the closest thing to a hero in the book, so indifferent to Fanny that we almost prefer his rakish rival.  In P&P, Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy are so mismatched that Elizabeth’s father and her older sister can’t believe it when she says they’re engaged.

In a way, I know what they mean, but it is all part of the comedy. Austen’s heroes are often deeply flawed.  Darcy insults Elizabeth at a ball, deplores her silly mother’s character, and later during a marriage proposal adds that he tried to resist his love because of her disgraceful family.  How do they get together? You have to read the book.

The Concept of a River’s Personhood

 Robert Macfarlane’s new book, Is a River Alive?, explains the concept of rivers as living beings.  Part nature writing, part travel writing, part science, this beautiful book is a lyrical description of rivers and their need for protection.   On his journeys to three countries he “meets” rivers and converses with scientists and activists. He paints a convincing portrait of the personhood of rivers.   He even refers to rivers by the relative pronoun, who.

I had no idea there was a Rights of Nature movement.  In many countries, rivers are now protected by law. Macfarlane says that a city council in Sussex in England “has acknowledged the rights and legal personhood of the River Ouse.”   

I picked up Macfarlane’s book because of a near-total fish kill in two rivers in the Midwest.

 A year and a half ago a fertilizer spill in southwest Iowa  killed over 750,000 fish in the East Nishnabotna River in Iowa and the Missouri River in Missouri.  It was a near-total fish kill in both states.

I understand that the rivers will come back – but this was a tragedy. As far as I know, no new measures have been legislated to protect the rivers.

Dandelion Wine & Rereading “Persuasion”

I have never made dandelion wine, but I read part of Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine years ago. (I was a fan of The Martian Chronicles and disappointed that DW wasn’t science fiction.) The dandelions are blooming here and I wondered whether you use the flowers or the stems. However, I’m not sanguine about boiling dandelions when so many weed killers are squirted in the neighborhood.

Here are the ingredients and a link to the recipe online. It looks simple.

INGREDIENTS FOR DANDELION WINE

  • 1 quart yellow dandelion blossoms, well rinsed
  • 1 gallon boiling water
  • 8 cups white sugar
  • 1 orange, sliced
  • 1 lemon slice
  • 1 (.18 ounce) package wine yeast

I would recommend MUCH soaking as well as rinsing!

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THIS POST-MODERN BOOK COVER?

The Janeites have been oddly quiet in their celebration of Jane Austen’s 250th birthday. I expected bonnet-sightings, buddy reads, and Jane Austen-inspired fashions.

Last year I reread four of Austen’s novels, so I am temperate, too; it’s too soon to reread her complete works. And in Captain Nemo’s view, that is a good thing. He cannot understand the extent of the fandom. And it can be over-the-top: costumes are worn at the revival of the 2005 film of Pride and Prejudice. At my age, I would dress as Mrs. Bates, which I might do by flinging a shawl around the shoulders and wearing a cap (but all I have is a Fordham baseball cap).

Anyway, my quiet celebration consists of rereading Persuasion. Anne Elliot is my favorite Jane Austen heroine.

And this is my favorite quote in Austen’s novels. Anne wittily says:

“My idea of good company, Mr. Elliot, is the company of clever, well-informed people, who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company.”

“You are mistaken,” said he gently, “that is not good company, that is the best.”

Mr. Elliot is not, however, the romantic hero: that would be Captain Wentworth, who, ideally, would be played by Clark Gable or Gary Cooper, depending on your interpretation. I see Joel McCrea as Mr. Elliot.

Every year I enjoy Anne’s company more, though I don’t approve of her turning down Captain Wentworth when she was 20. (She was persuaded by family and mentor.) She tries to persuade herself, and us, that she was right: it is better to be persuadable, she thinks, than rash like Louisa Musgrave, a young woman who endangers her life by impetuously jumping off the steps at Lyme despite Captain Wentworth’s warning.

But the present is all that matters. It is a pleasure to see Anne bloom again in the company of two suitors. She is in charge of her own life now.

TGITh! and have a good weekend.

A Year in Reading: SF, A Victorian Novella, Who Will Inherit Carlice Abbey?, & the Price of “Pride and Prejudice”


Books don’t let you down, people let you down.

And that’s why books are important. Forget AI: who needs that when we have books? Deeply flawed human beings moonlight as poets, playwrights, and novelists, and sibyl-like fall into a trance to chart the nuances of our changing culture. They mourn or satirize the economy, waste and conspicuous consumption, hatred and schadenfreude, and the extreme violence that destroys our already dying (dead?) planet.

Every year I sift my book journal for trends in my reading. My saddest interest in 2024 is the culture of “forgetting”: the blasé acceptance of climate change; a new feminist backlash, the elimination of American Studies and Women’s Studies departments from universities; the dearth of nature as industrial farming takes over every inch of land; life-threatening battles over lands, oil, and estates; and an earnest reminder that, even in our favorite Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer novels, money and marriage are intertwined.

These are not necessarily the best novels I’ve read this year, but they are the most memorable. I hope you enjoy reading about them!

The End of Civilization

Science fiction writers often embed controversial warnings about the future of Earth in their narratives. That is certainly true of the controversial Philip Wylie, who was put under house arrest in 1945 after the publication of his short story, “The Paradise Crater” (1945). In this story, he revealed information about the atom bomb a few months before the U.S. tested it successfully at Alamogordot.

Wylie’s last science fiction novel, The End of the Dream (1972), is a long, fascinating political rant about an ecological holocaust that decimates all but a tiny percentage of the population. Not only could it happen here, it has happened during heat bulb events in India. (The heat bulb is not the catalyst in Wylie’s novel, though.) The End of the Dream is a bit lopsided, but it is the most fascinating, utterly weird book I’ve read this year. And it’s a wonder Wylie didn’t get arrested for this book too. Well, he died. And, fortunately, the book is in print: it has been reissued by the University of Nebraska Press. (You can read my post about Wylie here.)

This fall, I was also fascinated by Frank Baker’s novel The Birds, a prototype for Daphne du Maurier’s macabre 1952 short story, “The Birds,” which was the basis for Alfred Hitchcock’s movie The Birds. .

The elderly narrator of Baker’s novel recalls the days before civilization fell. As a bored young insurance clerk in London, he spent much of his time writing poetry at his desk. One day he looks out the window and notices a flock of strange birds flying over Trafalgar Square. An old woman tries to feed them: a bird attacks her and follows her into the underground, where she is pecked to death in a phone booth. It turns out she was not a simple old woman who fed the birds but a procurer. The birds kill many people: some are simply in the way, others seem to be killed because of some egregious deed.

The birds get more aggressive as time goes on. Sometimes a single bird detaches itself from the flock and follows one person everywhere, even tapping at the person’s windows at night. This happens first to the narrator’s mother, then to him. It is terrifying and embarrassing. When the narrator meets Olga, a Russian immigrant , she explains that she had been followed by a bird, too, but you can get rid of the shadow bird if you look at it, let it do what it wants, and don’t show fear.

Without the assistance of the outsider (Olga, the immigrant), he would not have survived. And the birds bring about the ruin and collapse of civilization. (You can read the rest of the post here.)

Both Frank Baker and Philip Wylie are telling us what may or may not be true: that few will survive the end of civilization, whether wrought by corrupt technology or human greed.

A Pastoral Novella

Cousin Phillis, by Elizabeth Gaskell, a novella. In her gorgeous, lyrical style, Gaskell describes the unspoiled countryside before the railroads were built. The narrator, Paul Manning, is reminiscing about his youth and his happy times at Hope Farm. He left home at 17 to work to as a clerk for an engineer who planned railway lines. Not knowing what to do in his leisure, Paul decided to visit some cousins he had never met. Their home, Hope Farm, is idyllic, and his contact with the pastoral life balances Paul’s relationship with the industrial revolution.

Certainly this mellow farm will soothe even modern readers. Mrs. Holman prepares delicious fresh food, the like of which Paul has never tasted, while Mr. Holman, a minister and farmer, expands his mind with lively conversation. And most important is Paul’s beautiful, kind, scholarly cousin who knows Latin and Greek and is learning Italian. She is far more intellectual than he, but the two become close friends, almost like brother and sister. And then a romantic interest is introduced… Consider this a utopia compared to the previous two dystopian novels.

This year I was keeping my eye on the pastoral countryside – what’s left of it!

Who Deserves Carlice Abbey?

Birthday Party by C. H. B. Kitchin is perfect light reading for fans of Dicken’s Bleak House and Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle (a strange duo, I know). Published in 1938, this brilliant novel is the story of Carlice Abbey, a crumbling country house with a beautiful garden. There are four narrators, the elderly Isabel Carlice, who grew up at Carlice Abbey, her silly sister-in-law, Dora, her radical nephew, Ronald, who will inherit when he turns 21, and Stephen Payne, Dora’s lover. What begins as a cozy English novel turns unexpectedly creepy as we learn more about each character’s feelings about the house. Who will inherit the house? Consider this a “light” horror novel.

The Price of “Pride and Prejudice”

Everyone loves Jane Austen’s iconic Pride and Prejudice, but it wasn’t till a fifth reading that I made an unromantic observation: everything comes with a price tag. The heroine Elizabeth Bennet fiercely resists the lure of lucre when she turns down a marriage proposal from Mr. Collins, a ridiculous but well-off vicar. But she is shocked when her close friend, Charlotte, a woman somewhat older and nearer-her- marriage-expiration-date, agrees to marry this absurd little man. The truth is, Charlotte marries for money and a home.

Perhaps Elizabeth could afford to turn down Mr. Collins because the beaux just keep courting her. But Austen is satirical about the love of money and we certainly praise Elizabeth for turning down two suitors with money. But in their village society, every income and/or estate is analyzed down to the last penny. Mrs. Bennet is joyous when Mr. Bingley, a well-to-do young man, rents Netherfield and brings a small party, among them his best friend Darcy and his own two sisters. Mrs. Bennet hopes fantastically to marry off one of her daughters to Bingley. And how about Darcy, the rudest, handsomest rich man ever? Lizzie despises him and yet…

Most people read this as pure romance. But to me, the most romantic of Austen’s novels is Persuasion. The price tag dominates the Elliot family values as well, but the quiet heroine, Anne Elliot, suffers silently until in her late 20s she expresses her personal views.

Dead or Alive: What Makes a Good Reading Year?


Was 2024 a good reading year?

Every year is a good reading year because I am picky-picky-picky. I don’t finish a book unless it is (a) fascinating, (b) well-written, and (c) works some kind of spell on me. You know, Girls just want to have fun! But we also are earnest. I don’t care if it is the Book of the Year, I don’t care if if it wins every award, I’m blasé about reviews in the mainstream presses – but I seem to be able to pick the books that are right for me.

Every century is different. The twentieth century was different. So many voices and styles characterize an era. One minute you’re enchanted by Jean Stafford’s Pulitzer Prize winning short stories, next you’re reading Ruth Prawer Jhabvala’s Booker Prize-winning Heat and Dust, then you’re taking a break with Sue Grafton’s mysteries, then you are lost in Frank Herbert’s Dune, and then you discover the brilliant Margaret Drabble.

The New Yorker had a great influence on everybody. We were mad about the minimalist stories of Raymond Carver. And I remember going to bookstores all over town to find Bobbie Ann Mason’s books, though it might have been Harper’s or The Atlantic that drove me.

So why have I returned to the classics and the dead? It is partly due to a long illness. Once, when I was extremely ill in the hospital, I finally recovered enough to read a little. I chose Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Yes, I realized what I needed was the highest quality. And the doctor decided I was ready to leave the hospital when he found me reading Lucretius’s De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things). The doctor loved foreign languages and was impressed to meet a soulmate. The nurses informed me he knew eight languages.

Perhaps Jane Austen and Lucretius kept me alive. (Well, there was also medicine.) But there is no doubting the magic of literature. Fate brought these books to me when I needed them most.

Jane Austen’s “Persuasion”:  Pride and Passivity 

Jane Austen’s novels are my comfort reads.  In her last complete novel, Persuasion, a gentle romance, Austen considers the power of persuasion. Persuasion ruined Anne Elliot’s life, though the gentle heroine blames no one.  Persuaded by her mentor, Lady Russell, who was her late mother’s best friend, that it would be imprudent to marry Captain Wentworth, since he was in the Navy and beneath her in class, Anne, now 27, regrets the decision.

The truth is that eight years ago the opposition beat her down.  Her ridiculous father, Sir Walter Elliot, who likes reading the Baronetage (a book listing baronets), said the match would be “degrading.”  Lady Russell thought it “unfortunate” that a man of Captain Wentworth’s “uncertain profession” and lack of “connexions” would propose marriage.

Anne is confused, incoherent, and desperate to rationalize.  “Had she not imagined herself consulting his good, even more than her own, she could hardly have given him up. – The belief of being prudent, and self-denying principally for his advantage, was her chief consolation, under the misery of a parting…”  Captain Wentworth was hurt and furious:  he left the country.  And now he is a wealthy, successful naval captain – a suitable match.

Single daughters and widows in Regency England are often emotionally, if not financially, dependent on their families.  Anne, a single woman, has and had no autonomy or power.  Now at 27, she  has lost her looks and is on the way to being an old maid, or so people say.  Anne is dutiful, the one who visits and cares for her hypochondriac married younger sister, Mary, when Mary has a headache or an imaginary cold.  Anne also looks after Mary’s unruly children.

This is not the fate of her unmarried older sister, Elizabeth.  By a twist, Elizabeth is her father’s female double, treated more like his younger sister than like a daughter. Father and daughter are always together. Elizabeth, a vain, empty-headed woman, does not have to visit Mary. That is Anne’s duty. Elizabeth is still beautiful – almost a professional beauty – but slightly anxious about marriage now that she is 29.  She has her eye on delightful Mr. Elliot, the relative who will inherit Kellynch after her father’s death, because Sir Walter has no male progeny.  But delightful men are not always the most devoted, as we know from Willoughby in Sense and Sensibility, Mr. Crawford in Mansfield Park, and Wickham in Pride and Prejudice,

Very little of the novel is set at Kellynch (the Elliots’ home. Travel is very much part of the characters’ lives. Travel to Bath and Lyme gives the characters more scope for action.  Anne’s father and Elizabeth move to an apartment in Bath, where they parade around in all their beauty, while Anne is taking care of Mary at Upcross. Here she encounters Captain Wentworth. Anne barely dares to look at him at first. He has not forgiven her.  And yet he is always swiftly, discreetly helping her. He assists her into a carriage when she is tired; when Mary’s unruly little son climbs on her back and won’t get off, he swoops down and removes him.

Captain Wentworth is courteous, but when the Musgroves visit Lyme, she attracts two eligible men, one of them Mr. Elliot. Anne’s rivals, Louisa and Henrietta Musgrove, Mary’s young, vivacious sisters-in-law, are perfect marriage candidates for Captain Wentworth.  Anne assumes that he will marry Louisa, the liveliest of the two. 

The marriage plot proceeds. In Bath, Anne once again meets Captain Wentworth and Mr. Elliot.  But we also contrast Anne’s not-particularly-enviable position with that of her old school friend, Mrs. Smith, an impecunious widow, who lives in a tiny room, crippled and poor.  Having lost all her money and marital status, she entertains herself with gossip delivered by her nurse and the maid.  Anne does not approve of gossip, but Mrs. Smith’s correspondence backs up her experiences with charming but devious Mr. Elliot. Anne’s instinct was right: she had not entirely liked him.

In this perfect novel, Austen portrays a mature heroine: Austen’s other heroines are in their late teens or early twenties.  Certainly it is delightful to read about a woman blooming in her late twenties.  If only Austen had lived longer, she might have written about even older women. That is not, however, in the tradition of the 19th-century novel.

“Mansfield Park”:  My New Favorite Novel

What can one say about Jane Austen?  There are so many Jane fans, groupies, common readers, blogger, vloggers, and academics that anything you say will be redundant.  But I am popping in to laud Mansfield Park, which is my new favorite novel by Austen.

I have been acquainted with Jane Austen for years.  When I was 14 I carried a Modern Library edition of the Complete Works of Jane Austen everywhere one summer.  I had no Regency England clothes, but I reinvented Elizabeth Bennet’s look in a prim smocked-and-embroidered dress worn over jeans with Dr. Scholl’s Exercise sandals.  I wanted to live in Pride and Prejudice, and I would be Lizzie, not Lydia (closer to my age), but I was not thinking of the disadvantageous lack of indoor plumbing, running water, and electricity. 

She’s a fan of Mansfield Park, too.

It is a pity the Modern Library printed Austen’s books in order, because I did not enjoy the first novel, Sense and Sensibility.  Pride and Prejudice came as a great relief and I loved it.  And then I discovered the pointedly satiric Emma, which trumped even Pride and Prejudice.   By then I had graduated from Modern Library to the Norton.

Why Mansfield Park, you may ask?

I am fascinated by Austen’s delicate, serious portrait of Fanny Price in Mansfield Park, particularly in the latter part of the novel.  Having lived with her aunt, uncle, and cousins at Mansfield Park since she was 10, her visit home as an adult comes is a shock.  Her parents are poor, which of course she knew but the household is noisy and chaotic, which she had forgotten.  The house is dominated by her unruly brothers kicking and stampeding and her sisters fighting over a knife (a utensil, not a weapon), which belongs to Susan. Her mother cannot manage the housekeeping or her children, and sits in a state of exhaustion while the maid does what she wants when she wants:  one doesn’t expect good meals or even tea at the appropriate time.

The Price family’s slovenliness has an effect on Fanny’s health. Fanny is so sensitive that she can  barely stand the noise and the cramped rooms.  The air of the town is stagnant and there is no place to walk.  And then she is burdened by a visit from her unwanted suitor, Mr. Crawford, whom I found utterly charming and who even Fanny admits is courteous and tactful about her family. He has taken on doing good works at the cottages at his estate, and asks her advice.  (Dorothea in Middlemarch might have liked him.) Fanny approves. But of course she does not love him.

Over the years, I have been disappointed by Fanny’s choice of lover. Witty Mr. Crawford seems to fall deeply in love with her, and I do believe in his reform, at least for a while.  Fanny’s choice of lover, her cousin Edmund, who is openly mad about Miss Crawford, Mr. Crawford’s sister, confides in Fanny about his struggle to win her over.  It could be a comedy, but it is not.

This reading, decades after my first reading (I shall not shock you with my age), I paid close attention to Fanny’s thoughts, wishes, and brilliant analyses of character.  Mansfield Park is a very great novel, in the class of Charlotte Bronte’s Villette.

What should you wear at Mansfield Park?  You might want to wear a Regency gown, but is adequate to dress in cropped pants, a linen blouse, and sandals. Or perhaps vintage culottes and an asymmetrical t-shirt.

We need to design Jane Austen reading-wear!

Austen Notes: I Am Not the Kind of Girl Who…

I am not the kind of woman who travels to England to stalk Jane Austen’s past.

Methinks the lady doth protest too much.

“You wrong me,”I say dramatically. 

My tolerance of tours is limited these days. If I finally get to Bath, the scene of Persuasion and at least one of Austen’s homes,  I will trail after the tour guides in their Regency gowns, bonnets, and ballet slippers, impressed by the depth of their knowledge. But I am not one of those 90-minute tourists. I leave after 30 minutes, maybe 45 if I am fascinated.

It is tea time.

The guides never sit down. 

TOUR GUIDE OATH:  I pledge to wear a Regency gown and bonnet which shall be provided by the costume department of the museum. I pledge to deliver the lecture exactly as written in the script...

A tough job, but perhaps fun.

Jane Austen Shopping Do’s and Don’t’s

Here are suggestions as to what to buy and what not in Bath. We all want different things, I realize.

What a lovely bonnet!

1.  A bonnet.  Pray, pray, pray, don’t buy a bonnet.  There is nowhere to wear a bonnet.  It would look suspicious on a plane, wouldn’t it?  They would X-ray the bonnet.  They would find your lost Jane Austen cameo in the bonnet. They would x-ray it, too. They would find it suspicious.

A bonnet would have been out of place even in my Catholic girlhood, when women had to wear hats to mass. We wore mantillas, never, never the bonnet.

2.  A Jane Austen notebook. .I admit I HAVE a Jane Austen notebook.  It is a blue flex-plastic bound notebook with a saying from Emma on the cover, “You must be the best judge of your own happiness.” When I open the cover of “A Novel journal,” as the manufacturer calls it, it freaks me out a bit because the tiny pink lines actually consist of letters that make up the miniature, presumably abridged text of Emma. 

There are countless Austen notebooks and journals. And they are all so pretty, don’t you think?

3.  Jane Austen stationery.   I am not the kind of girl who buys Jane Austen stationery.  I love stationery, but no one writes letters anymore.  I would resurrect the custom if I could find out what happened to Pam, my Australian penpal in third grade.  But, alas, I don’t remember her last name or address.

I do miss the age of letters. Today it is all phones, social media, and (in my case)  imaginary texting.  “I’ll text you,” I say, holding up a hairbrush and punching imaginary buttons on the handle.  They think I’m joking…until they try to text me…

5.  Yes to all Jane Austen books! You can always use a new copy of Pride and Prejudice or a history of Bath.

Alas, I do not plan to visit Bath immediately.

WHAT DO/WILL/DID YOU RECOMMEND TO DO IN BATH?

The Jane Austen Lifestyle:  Books, Sets, and the Charm of Different Editions

Illustration of Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet in Pride & Prejudice, by c. E. Brock (1895)

I am delighted by my summer rereading of Jane Austen, admiring the details in books I had previously considered slight. The advantage to reading them back-to-back is noticing the deepening of her characterization as she hones her style over the years. And I realize that not all of the books are comedies, though all have comic elements.

But for the moment, as a preamble to observations on Jane, let’s chat on a shallow note about the pros and cons of different editions. I am not exactly a collector, no rare 19th-century editions here, but I have at least two different copies of each of my favorite Austen novels. It is a treat I allow myself as a “by-God-yes-I’m-a-bibliophile!”

Austen Sets & Partial Sets

I always begin with Penguin, my favorite publisher of classics. I love the charming designs of the seven-volume Penguin Clothbound Classics set of Austen. The paper is creamy and thick and the books are durable. The pages do not tan as they often do in paperbacks. I do not have a complete set, but certainly appreciate those I have.

The Premier Penguin Clothbound Classics set

I am also a Penguin paperback fan. You can acquire the black-spined Penguin paperbacks of Austen separately and build your own set more cheaply than with hardbacks.

THE PENGUIN ADVANTAGE: attractive book, with scholarly notes, introductions, and appendices in hardcover and paperback.

A Penguin paperback edition of Persuasion

THE WORLD CLOUD CLASSICS SET. I am drawn to the bright covers of these “paperbacks” with vinyl-plastic flexible covers. The prices are reasonable, about $16 each, and you can buy them as a set (the cheapest price I’ve seen is $45). N.B. They look gorgeous, but I have not handled them personally, only seen them in photos. Caveat, emptor!

WORLD CLOUD CLASSICS ADVANTAGE. Design and cheapness.

THE HARPER MUSE JANE AUSTEN SET. This is my favorite Jane Austen set. I love the covers, which feature lacy laser-cut art, and the books are the perfect size, with just the right amount of heft. There are no illustrations but notable quotes are highlighted on pages of their own. What I’m saying is that I like the utilitarian design of the books. Nothing fancy on the pages, just the interaction between the text and the reader.

! THE HARPER MUSE ADVANTAGE: Lovely, unusual covers, no-frill pages, perfect print size.

THE MARJOLIN BASTIN EDITIONS. This series of three of Austen’s novels, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Emma, features bright floral covers and illustrations of flowers by Marjolin Bastin. She is much admired by vloggers. The drawback: I had expected illustrations of the scenes and characters.

THE MARJOLIN BASTIN ADVANTAGE. Lovely design and illustrations, and these books lie open flat, like an oversized Moleskine notebook.

THE FOLIO SOCIETY COLLECTION. The beautiful Folio Society Austen set can be bought one book at a time, or one can splurge on the complete set. They are expensive, but unwieldy if you read in “the horizontal position. They are expensive, $75 per book, but it is a treat to have such a well-made edition.

The illustrations are gorgeous, often with a modern Gothic look, and I have enjoyed the introductions by novelists. Sebastian Faulkes explains his unique take on Darcy in his introduction to Pride and Prejudice: he comes right out and says how cruel Darcy is to Elizabeth. Fans don’t necessarily want to hear this, but Darcy is indeed more than aloof in the beginning.

Folio Society set of Jane Austen

THE FOLIO ADVANTAGE. The beautiful design and illustrations.

Do you have any favorite editions of Austen? There are so many.

Price Tags in “Pride and Prejudice”

Pride and Prejudice is a comedy about love, or an existential comedy about the incongruity of love. Elizabeth Bennet’s friend, Charlotte Lucas,28, marries a ridiculous vicar she does not esteem because she has no suitors and wants a home of her own. Twenty-year-old Elizabeth, the spirited, witty heroine, is not seduced by money or status. She nobly declines to be charmed by Mr. Darcy after he is rude to her at a ball.  Darcy is impossibly handsome, impossibly rich, and impossibly snobbish.  He concedes that Elizabeth has fine eyes and that her older sister Jane is pretty but despises their mother, the ineffably silly Mrs. Bennet.  

Elizabeth may resist the love of lucre, but everything comes with a price tag in Pride and Prejudice. Every income and/or estate is analyzed down to the last penny. Mrs. Bennet is joyous when Mr. Bingley, a well-to-do young man, rents Netherfield and brings a small party, among them his best friend Darcy and his own two sisters. Mrs. Bennet hopes fantastically to marry off one of her daughters to Bingley.

Soon the whole town is buzzing about the money. 

We learn:

“Mr. Bingley inherited money to the amount of nearly a hundred thousand pounds.”

His two unpleasant sisters “had a fortune of twenty thousand pounds, were in the habit of spending more than they ought, and associating with people of rank.”

And then there is Darcy, the hero of this love story.  Everyone at the ball is impressed “with Darcy’s fine, tall person, handsome features noble mien, and the report which was in circulation within five minutes of his entrance of him having ten thousand a year.”

He alienates the people of Meryton by refusing to dance with the local girls.  After all, money can go only so far in gaining esteem.  Elizabeth continues to hate him, even after he changes his mind about her and begins to make overtures of love.

During this fourth or fifth reading, I questioned whether Darcy is “Pride” and Elizabeth “Prejudice.”  Darcy and Lizzie both seem to me to personify both qualities. Who is proudest, who is most prejudiced? Lizzie is pert and abrupt with Darcy, misunderstanding his character on the word of an attractive soldier who spreads vile rumors about him.  And when Darcy proposes to Lizzie, he is so rude that he actually say he has tried to defeat his love for her because of her deplorable mother and family connections.. Who would not say “No” to that? Darcy’s social skills are terrible!

But Darcy comes to the rescue when the youngest and silliest Bennet sister, Lydia, elopes with a libertine. Only later does Lizzie learn that Darcy negotiated with and paid the man to marry Lydia after he had tracked them down.

And then, ZOWIE! Elizabeth and her aunt and uncle vacation in Derbyshire and decide to tour Pemberley, Darcy’s estate. Elizabeth can’t help but think she could have been the mistress of this great house.  And when they run into Darcy, let us just say there is chemistry between Darcy and Elizabeth.

There is more comedy to come, because everyone is confused about Elizabeth’s relationship with Darcy. No one, not even her older sister Jane, believes Elizabeth should marry Darcy.  Mr. Bennet strongly advises her to think again.  He believes she is marrying for money.  “My dear Lizzie, I would- I do congratulate you – but are you certain?  Forgive the question – are you quite certain that you could be happy with him?”

And “Are  you out of your mind to be accepting this man?  Have you not always  hated him?”

All this is hilarious, of course, though it raises certain issues: penniless Elizabeth and rich Darcy are in love, but Darcy has paid for her esteem by helping Lydia.  Yet it is a completely satisfying ending of a marriage plot. Austen wickedly leaves us with a few questions, but this is a gentle comedy.