hosted by:
Katie @Books and Things
Marissa @Blatantly Bookish
Claudia @Spinster's Library
#JaneAustenJuly2021 (here)
I am going the Persuasion route with the challenge prompts. Starting late, so this will spill over into next month.
Challenges:
1. Read one of Jane Austen’s six novels
by Jane Austen
An Annotated Edition
edited by Robert Morrison
Classics, Historical, England | Published: 2011 | Goodreads
Published posthumously with Northanger Abbey in 1817, Persuasion crowns Jane Austen’s remarkable career. It is her most passionate and introspective love story. This richly illustrated and annotated edition brings her last completed novel to life with previously unmatched vitality. In the same format that so rewarded readers of Pride and Prejudice: An Annotated Edition, it offers running commentary on the novel (conveniently placed alongside Austen’s text) to explain difficult words, allusions, and contexts, while bringing together critical observations and scholarship for an enhanced reading experience. The abundance of color illustrations allows the reader to see the characters, locations, clothing, and carriages of the novel, as well as the larger political and historical events that shape its action.
In his Introduction, distinguished scholar Robert Morrison examines the broken engagement between Anne Elliot and Frederick Wentworth, and the ways in which they wander from one another even as their enduring feelings draw them steadily back together. His notes constitute the most sustained critical commentary ever brought to bear on the novel and explicate its central conflicts as well as its relationship to Austen’s other works, and to those of her major contemporaries, including Lord Byron, Walter Scott, and Maria Edgeworth.
2. Read something by Jane Austen that is not one of her main six novels
part of Love And Friendship And Other Early Works
A Collection of Juvenile Writings
by Jane Austen
online from Project Gutenberg's Complete Works of Jane Austen (here)
ha! amusing little bitty story
3. Read a non-fiction work about Jane Austen or her time
by Sarah Fabiny
Biography, Childrens | Published: 2017 | Goodreads | my rating: 5
quick bio bits, loved the illustrations
(Little People, Big Dreams)
by Mª Isabel Sánchez Vegara
Biography, Childrens | Published: 2018 | Goodreads | my rating: 5
little gem with color illustrations
(The Rajes #2)
by Sonali Dev
Romance, Contemporary, Retelling - Persuasion by Jane Austen
Published: 2020 | Goodreads | my rating: 4
second chances with more than one relationship, enjoyed the cooking reality tv show element
note: some dark experiences mentioned
by Sarah Dass
YA, Romance, Retelling - Persuasion by Jane Austen | Published: 2021 | Goodreads
5. Read a book by a contemporary of Jane Austen
by Maria Edgeworth
Classics, Romance, England | Published: 2009 (first 1801) | Goodreads
6. Watch a direct screen adaptation of a Jane Austen book
Director: Howard Baker
Writer: Julian Mitchell
Based on book by: Jane Austen
Stars: Ann Fairbank, Bryan Marshall
History, Romance | imdb | my rating: 4
Eight years earlier, Anne Elliot, the daughter of a financially troubled aristocratic family, was persuaded to break off her engagement to Frederick Wentworth, a young seaman, who, though promising, had poor family connections. When her father rents out the family estate to Admiral Croft, Anne is thrown into company with Frederick, because his sister is Mrs. Croft. Frederick is now a rich and successful Captain, and a highly eligible bachelor. Whom will he marry? One of Anne's sister's husband's sisters? Or will he and Anne rekindle the old flame?
A lot of long walks including a super sweet one with Captain Wentworth towards the end makes this version a bit tedious. But Anne in a couple atrocious dresses and big hair adds to the amusement of it all.
7. Watch a modern screen adaptation of a Jane Austen book
Directors: Alex Appel, Jonathan Lisecki
Writers: Jonathan Lisecki, Barbara Radecki
Based on book by: Jane Austen
Stars: Alicia Witt, Mark Moses
Comedy, Romance, Jane Austen theme | imdb
A single woman focused on her career in New York is forced to deal with the aftermath of a failed relationship when an ex-boyfriend hires her company.
Readalong:
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
*Persuasion by Jane Austen
Extra add-ons to do:
A 1000-Piece Jigsaw Puzzle | details
The Unemployed Philosophers Guild has made this handsome jigsaw puzzle featuring Jane Austen’s works! Each quote is rendered by hand, charmingly filigreed, and ornamented to pleasing effect. You’ll lose yourself for hours in this captivating puzzle – a new way to surround yourself with Jane Austen’s words – her wit, her empathy, and her still-brilliant observations about a party.
Tea time and flip-through:
Qig Xin Cultivar Green tea
Bingley's Tea: Jane Austen tea series (here)
by Janine Barchas
History, Jane Austen theme | Published: 2019 | Goodreads
In the nineteenth century, inexpensive editions of Jane Austen's novels targeted to Britain's working classes were sold at railway stations, traded for soap wrappers, and awarded as school prizes. At just pennies a copy, these reprints were some of the earliest mass-market paperbacks, with Austen's beloved stories squeezed into tight columns on thin, cheap paper. Few of these hard-lived bargain books survive, yet they made a substantial difference to Austen's early readership. These were the books bought and read by ordinary people.
Packed with nearly 100 full-color photographs of dazzling, sometimes gaudy, sometimes tasteless covers, The Lost Books of Jane Austen is a unique history of these rare and forgotten Austen volumes. Such shoddy editions, Janine Barchas argues, were instrumental in bringing Austen's work and reputation before the general public. Only by examining them can we grasp the chaotic range of Austen's popular reach among working-class readers.
