TALKING JANE AUSTEN WITH ... HELENA KELLY, AUTHOR OF JANE AUSTEN THE SECRET RADICAL

Her just released  Jane Austen the Secret Radical  has been animating a new interesting debate around our beloved Regency lady. Helena Kelly has been under the spotlight in the latest days as the author of this interesting non-fiction book which uncovers Jane Austen as a radical, spirited and politically engaged woman writer. So those who have in their minds the tranquil, smiling woman on the new £10 pound banknote apparently got everything wrong about her.  

After receiving my review copy of this brilliant work and after reading its original analysis, I ended up with a few questions to ask Helena Kelly so I wrote them down and was graciously granted the answers. 

I must thank Helena for her kindness and generosity in the fuss that must have been the promotion of her book in the first days after the release. There have been reviews and interviews even in the major press, but she could find some spare time and answered my questions!  Here I am now, happy and proud,  to share my little interview with you.

Maria Grazia

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Hello Helena and welcome to our online Jane Austen book club! My first question is … I’ve always thought Jane Austen was rather revolutionary, but now you’ve taken a step ahead of me: a radical?

Hello, and thank you for inviting me! The title Jane Austen the Secret Radical isn’t actually mine, but it is a good choice for the book. I don’t know that Austen wanted to overturn things, but she did want to dig down and examine them, to show people how they actually worked, and that’s what radicalism is about, isn’t it, getting down to the ‘radix’, the root of things.

MR DARCY? HE'LL JUST STAY A JERK. MR KNIGHTLEY? YES, PLEASE! TALKING JANE AUSTEN WITH ... KATIE HEANEY. WIN DEAR EMMA PAPERBACK.

Hello and thank you for joining us at My Jane Austen Book Club, Katie! It’s awesome to have you as a guest and  to celebrate the release of your Austen-inspired,  “Dear Emma”. Ready for my questions? 

First one is a “twitter game”: How would you present your book in 140 characters?

Harriet, a tender know-it-all, gets her heart broken, makes an enemy, makes an unexpected friend, and learns she doesn't know everything.

How did the idea for “Dear Emma” come to your mind?

I was inspired by Jane Austen’s Emma, but also by friendships formed between women who’ve dated the same man, or been interested in the same man, which is a situation I found myself in several times when I was younger.

How much does your heroine, Harriet, shares with Emma Woodhouse?

She would think nothing, but they are both very absolutist in their views of other people, and what’s “right,” and how people should behave. But she shares more with Harriet Smith (her namesake) in her sort of underdog-ness, and tendency to act passively, or as a sort of sidekick sometimes.

JANE AND THE WATERLOO MAP BLOG TOUR - TALKING JANE AUSTEN WITH ... STEPHANIE BARRON

Stephanie Barron

Award winning author Stephanie Barron has been touring the blogosphere since February 2nd and will go on till February 22nd, 2016 to share her latest release, Jane and the Waterloo Map. Twenty popular book bloggers specializing in Austenesque fiction, mystery and Regency history are featuring guest blogs, interviews, excerpts and book reviews from this highly anticipated novel in the acclaimed Being a Jane Austen Mystery series. The tour started right here at My Jane Austen Book Club and I'm so glad to have the opportunity to have Stephanie as my guest again today to talk Jane Austen with her.  The fabulous giveaway contest, including copies of Ms. Barron’s book and other Jane Austen-themed items, which I linked to the previous post is still running and will be open  till the end of the tour.  Now, please,  enjoy our chat and join the discussion in the comment section, if you wish.

Hello and thank you so much, Stehanie, for taking the time to answer my questions. First one is, do you remember your first encounter with Jane Austen and her work? What were your first impressions? Have they changed over the years?

TALKING JANE AUSTEN WITH ... LYNN MESSINA, AUTHOR OF PREJUDICE & PRIDE. WIN COPIES OF THE BOOK!

Hello Lynn and welcome to our online Jane Austen club. My first question is, what was your first encounter with Austen and her world like? And was it through reading one of her books or watching one of the movie/TV adaptations?

My first experience was reading Pride and Prejudice when I was fifteen years old. I was in the back of my car and my family were driving from Long Island to Montreal to go skiing, which was, like, an eight-hour trek, and I’d slept for most of the trip, so when we arrived at the slopes I’d just gotten up to Mr. Darcy’s letter to Lizzy and the last thing I wanted to do—I mean, the very last thing—was put the book down and go ski.

When and how you came to think of writing  a Jane Austen –inspired book?

I came up with the idea after seeing Bride & Prejudice—Gurinder Chadha’s Bollywood adaptation—in the movie theater so that was eleven years ago now. I was waiting with a friend for her bus and we were chatting about the film and we both thought it was slightly off because the Elizabeth character was so mean. She was, we thought, more like the Darcy character, and by the time her bus came, say, ten minutes later, I had the general idea mapped out. What I loved about it was how perfectly the names worked with it: Fitzwilliam Darcy becoming Darcy Fitzwilliam and Elizabeth Bennet becoming Bennet Elizabeth. OK, his last name doesn’t work at all, and don’t think I haven’t been sulking about that for more than a decade.

What’s surprising in your retelling of Jane Austen’s most beloved tale is … a gender-bendy twist. Could you tell us more about your choice and briefly introduce us your characters?

It’s all hazy now, but years ago I read about a director who switched all the parts in a Shakespeare play—it might have been Macbeth—to see if the emotional truths held regardless of gender. That stayed with me and a few years later I wrote a book about a girl who stages a gender-bendy Hamlet to protest gender inequality in her high school’s drama department. So as soon as I came up with the idea, I embraced it with both hands because it dealt with things I’ve been thinking about for a long time.

TALKING JANE AUSTEN WITH ... TERRY TOWNSEND, AUTHOR OF "JANE AUSTEN'S HAMPSHIRE"

Former graphic designer Terry Townsend from England,continues to pursue his passion for literary landscapes. In his latest book ‘Jane Austen’s Hampshire’ Terry takes readers on a tour ofthe beautiful and historic county where Jane was born and spent most of her days.

The in-depth exploration of the places where Jane lived, loved and found inspirationbegins with the Steventon neighbourhood that became the cradle of her talent. Following in Jane’s steps there are visits to Chawton and the cottage that saw the blossoming of her genius with an eventual pause for thought at her final resting place in the magnificent cathedral at Winchester.

Included along the way are the great maritime cities of Southampton and Portsmouth together with the market towns where Jane shopped, the villages where she visited friends, the country parks where she strolled, the country houses where she danced and the churches where she worshipped.

For the devotee who already has a wealth of knowledge about their favourite author and her novels, ‘Jane Austen’s Hampshire’ reveals many ofthe lesser known places that wereimportant to the Austen family and their brilliant daughter.

TALKING JANE AUSTEN WITH ... LINDA BEUTLER ON HER LONGBOURN TO LONDON BLOG TOUR + DOUBLE GIVEAWAY

Welcome  to My JA Book Club, Linda ! Welcome back at My Jane Austen Book Club and thanks for accepting to talk Jane Austen with me.

You are very welcome, Maria. Thank you for being the very first stop on the Longbourn to London Blog Tour.

This is my first question for you: Longbourn to London is not your first Austenesque novel, it comes after The Red Chrysanthemum. But when and how you came to think of writing a Jane Austen – inspired book?

Actually, Longbourn to London came first. When I discovered Jane Austen Fan Fiction, in September 2011, I positively devoured every book I could get my hands on. I started with my local library, then on to Amazon and at Powell’s City of Books here in Portland (they also sell online). Through it all, I had no idea about the whole universe of blogs and posting sites like A Happy Assembly. Anyway, operating in something of a vacuum, I decided to try my hand. The sequels were probably my least favourite sub-genre, and I didn’t have a plausible what-if in mind at first, so I decided to look into Pride and Prejudice itself and was drawn to that great gulf Jane Austen left at the very end, rushing us through Elizabeth and Darcy’s betrothal with merely a couple of conversations. Hence, I expanded on the journey of discover Darcy and Elizabeth embarked upon when they became engaged.

     If you read Longbourn to London carefully, you’ll find the exact question Elizabeth asks Darcy that ending up being the inspiration point for The Red Chrysanthemum. By January 2013, both books were essentially complete.

TALKING JANE AUSTEN WITH ... MEDEA YORBA, AUTHOR OF "DARCY'S LAST PROMISE"

Welcome  to My Jane Austen  Book Club, Medea ! I’m always very happy to let my readers and Janeite friends meet new Austen-inspired writers, so thank you for  joining our on line club and  accepting to talk Jane Austen with me.

Thank you so much for inviting me and for such a lovely warm welcome Maria.

First of all,  I challenge you to advertise your  Darcy’s Last Promise  in less than 50 words. Ready to go?

Jane Austen’s beloved characters, Fitzwilliam Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet and their deliciously romantic love story have captured imaginations for over two hundred years. In their final moments together, Darcy makes his Last Promise to Elizabeth. He vows that somehow he will find her and they will be together again.

This is my second question for you: when and how you came to think of  writing  a Jane Austen – inspired book?

In 2008, my mother introduced me to the wonderful world of Jane Austen. I fell absolutely in love with Darcy and Elizabeth and of course the other beloved characters from Pride and Prejudice. Naturally, once I had gobbled up the original, I went on to enjoy several movie versions and to read a great number of the sequels, spin-offs, and prequels based upon Pride and Prejudice. Like so many others, I couldn’t just stop when the story ended. I yearned for more, and then more. So I had the idea of writing a book that not only gave us more, but put them in a tailspin. Two hundred years later, they not only had to rediscover each again, but to go through the challenges of falling in like and then love again.

TALKING JANE AUSTEN WITH ... SARAH PRICE, AUTHOR OF FIRST IMPRESSIONS, AN AMISH ADAPTATION OF PRIDE AND PREJUDICE.

Join Sarah Price and me in our "Talking Jane Austen Session" and take your chances to win her retelling of Pride and Prejudice, First Impressions. 5 ebook copies for 5 lucky winners! Check out the rafflecopter form below this post. 

Hello and welcome, Sarah. It's a great pleasure to make your acquaintance and present you to our Austenite friends here at My Jane Austen Book Club. My first question for you is: Why Jane Austen? I mean, what  are  the reasons  of the appeal  of Jane Austen’s world for the  21st century reader?

I’ve always been a reader as well as a writer. I read Jane Austen’s books so many times over the years, starting as a young girl. In today’s world, I believe more people are starting to read again after a lull. However, I also believe that in the world of 140 characters or less statuses, we have lost an appreciation of the classics. Many of my regular readers have not read books like Pride & Prejudice or Sense & Sensibility. This was my way of blending my love for the classics with my deep appreciation of the Amish. It was a way of showing readers that the themes in Jane Austen’s books transcend far beyond one particular time period. It was also my way of introducing my Amish genre readers to Jane Austen and vice versa. 

TALKING JANE AUSTEN WITH ... VICTORIA KINCAID: THE SECRETS OF DARCY AND ELIZABETH. WIN ONE OF THREE EBOOK COPIES!

My special guest for these Easter holidays is Victoria Kincaid, author of The Secrets of Darcy and Elizabeth. Victoria has a Ph.D. in English literature and has taught composition to unwilling college students. Today she teaches business writing to willing office professionals and tries to give voice to the demanding cast of characters in her head. She lives in Virginia with her husband, two children who love to read, and an overly affectionate cat. A lifelong Jane Austen fan, Victoria confesses to an extreme partiality for the Colin Firth miniseries version of Pride and Prejudice.

You'll find updating about her writing and releases at her site. You can purchase her Pride and Prejudice variation here. There's a giveaway contest for 3 ebook copies below this post, it is open internationally, so,  please, take your chances.  Good luck and Happy Easter time, everyone!

Maria Grazia

Jane Austen and the 21st century. She lives in book clubs, conversations, sequels and movie adaptations. Do you think she has travelled through the centuries unchanged?

I think how we view Jane Austen changes constantly because our culture is always in flux.  If you look at the 1940 version of P&P, it’s quite different from any Austen adaptation today because they were focused on different aspects of her work.  She’s enjoying a surge in popularity today because particular aspects of her writing are particularly appealing to our culture at this moment.  I guess I would say that Austen hasn’t changed, but how we see her changes quite a bit.

TALKING JANE AUSTEN WITH ... AUTHOR JOANA STARNES + DOUBLE GIVEAWAY OF THE SUBSEQUENT PROPOSAL

Hello  Joana. I’m glad you accepted to join us here at our online book club to talk Jane Austen with us. Welcome!

Many thanks for inviting me, Maria Grazia – it’s a great pleasure to be here!

My first question is: when and how did your lucky encounter with Jane Austen take place?

If we’re talking ‘first encounters’, like many of us here, I began reading Jane Austen in my teens. Real appreciation, though, came much later. At first, I read her novels for the storyline, but as I grew older, I began to look for context, and reading them in context made me love them so much more!

And then came the 1995 adaptation, which I absolutely adored, not only for the usual reasons – i.e. Colin Firth J - but also for the fantastic attention to detail! Having watched the miniseries, I was left craving for more. Luckily, I came across ‘The Making of Pride and Prejudice’, a book explaining how the 1995 adaptation was put together and I was mesmerised by all the details it mentioned, from the endless hours spent looking for the perfect location, to the countless photographs and sketches done in order to get Lydia’s hairstyle right, or Mr. Bennet’s powdering gown, or the colour and the cut of Darcy’s coat! I was thrilled with the little inside stories too, like Benjamin Whitrow (Mr. Bennet) recounting how the period cook was kind enough to ask for his favourite pudding, so that it could be used in one of the scenes – and how he gorged himself on gooseberry fool during the first, second and third take, only to end up hating the very sight of it by the time that particular scene was finally ‘in the can’!

Then, having devoured the book, unlike Mr. Whitrow and his favourite pudding I was still left wanting more, so I began trawling the internet until one happy day I discovered JAFF – and the rest is history!

TALKING JANE AUSTEN WITH ... MELANIE KERR, AUTHOR OF FOLLIES PAST + GIVEAWAY

First of all Melanie, welcome to our online book club. Would you mind to introduce yourself to our readers?

Thank-you, I am thrilled to have this chance to talk with you. I am a long-time Austenite as well as a lawyer and a mother of two little boys. I make my own Regency costumes and force my friends to drink tea out of china cups.  I have just released my first novel, Follies Past: a Prequel to Pride and Prejudice.

Of course, my first question is:  “When was your first encounter with Jane Austen and how was that?

A friend gave me Pride and Prejudice in university, about 15 years ago. She had read it in a literature class and thought I would like it. She was right -  I couldn’t put it down. When I look back on it, I remember sort of imagining it in a modern setting, because I didn’t have any references for the aesthetic of the period. I hadn’t seen any of the movies and didn’t know what anything would have looked like. I have, over time, come to love all Jane Austen’s work, and to develop a fascination for the period, which is consistent with my lifelong love of petticoats and pastoral imagery, but my first encounter with Jane Austen didn’t involve any of that, and I loved it anyway.

“Follies Past: A Prequel to Pride and Prejudice”  has just been released.  How would you invite our Janeite friends to grab their copy and read it in about 50 words?

Before Darcy came to Netherfield, refused to dance at Meryton or laid eyes on Elizabeth, he rescued his sister from certain peril at the hands of the infamous Mr. Wickham. This is that story, knitted together with characters and histories of my own invention and all told with love and reverence.

 What was your intent at rewriting Wickham and Georgiana’s story?

One of the great things about Jane Austen’s storytelling is the way she ties everything up into a deeply satisfying ending. We all want the books to go on and on, but extending the characters and the plot after the final chapter felt to me like interfering with that perfect ending. And it would all  have to be speculative. Nobody knows what happens after the close of a book, but Jane Austen herself tells

TALKING JANE AUSTEN WITH ... JEANNA ELLSWORTH + GIVEAWAY OF MR DARCY'S PROMISE

Hello,  Jeanna, and welcome at My Jane Austen Book Club. My first question for you is: When and How did your lucky encounter with Jane Austen take place?

My very first encounter was at a garage sale at least 10 years ago where I picked up my first copy of Pride and Prejudice (couldn’t tell you where that copy went since then). My reintroduction was with the 2005 movie, of which I loved and bought a copy immediately. But it wasn’t until my sister, KaraLynne Mackrory, started writing JAFF books and sending me the chapters as she wrote them that I went from liking the book, to loving the story, to obsessing over it and becoming a badge-wearing-fully-fledged-hopeless addict.  That was January 2012. I remember it well because my divorce had been final for just over a year and I hadn’t ventured into the dating world yet. Darcy looked pretty darn good to a romance-starved single mother of three daughters.

How did it change your life?

It has changed my life in so many ways. First, I started reading every JAFF book I could find on Amazon.com, at the library, loaned from my fellow JAFF addict sister, and those I researched online. I currently have about 6 JAFF books on my kindle waiting for me to read, a few more on my wish list on Amazon, and I just ordered another that will be coming in the mail.  I get a little jittery when I don’t have a “to be read next” list. But it is more than that. It changed the way I look at life. I wish I could be more like Elizabeth Bennet. My bad marriage and good divorce (let’s face it, a good divorce is better than any bad marriage) left me with a lack of faith in men in general and a sense of I-can-do-it-on-my-own-I-don’t-need-a-man attitude. I also went from repressing my inner Lizzy due to shell shock, to being a little impertinent at times, more so than before I fell in love with Elizabeth Bennet. It changed my vocabulary which now has affected my daughters’ vocabulary as well, whose affirmative answer to me when I ask them a question is now “Indeed”. It made me push myself outside of my very comfortable (and single) life into one where I risk loving and being loved, all because now I believe there are real Mr. Darcys out there, and let’s face it, I kind of would like to find a Mr. Darcy. And of course, it changed the fact that now I am an author, a title I never thought I wanted for myself.

Talking Jane Austen with ... Ulrike Böhm from Germany - Author of "Ein Engel für Mr. Darcy" (An Angel for Mr Darcy)

Hello Ulrike and welcome to our little Austen club online. First of all thanks for accepting my invitation to talk Jane Austen with me and here’s my first question: You & Jane.  When was your first encounter with Austen and her work? What was it like?

Hi Maria Grazia! First and foremost, let me thank you for your warm welcome and for giving me the opportunity to introduce my first novel to your blog readers.

My first encounter with a book by our Jane was in a library. I was 16 or 17 and an avid reader of all sorts of books. At that time I lived in a small village and the village library was literally my second home. One day I borrowed “Pride and Prejudice” and simply couldn’t put it down until I’d read it through. And then I started anew...Since then I read all of Jane Austen’s novels but none is as dear to me as “Pride and Prejudice”. I regularly read it all over again and again, it never tires me.

How came you started writing an  Austen-inspired book instead?

Not instead. Rather as well. I love to read not only the original by Jane Austen’s pen but I’m also a great fan of the so-called Fan Fiction. I started with reading them online, there are zillions of according websites as you and your readers must know. Then I discovered Amazon making it easy for me to order books from abroad and therefore “real” printed Fan Fiction  – prequels and sequels and parallels. I must have bought up to 160 different titles until now, I lost count as I started to buy ebooks. It won’t be long and they’ll outweigh the paper books.

TALKING JANE AUSTEN WITH ... DEBORAH YAFFE, AUTHOR OF "AMONG THE JANEITES: A JOURNEY THROUGH THE WORLD OF JANE AUSTEN FANDOM"

First of all Deborah, welcome to our online book club. I’m really glad you’re here today to introduce yourself and your new book to our readers.
Thank  you for inviting me!

Of course, my first question is:  “How did it come that you  decided to write about  Austen  fans,  the so – called Janeites” ?

I’ve been an Austen fan since I was a child, and over the years I attended a couple of the Jane Austen Society of North America’s annual conferences, which I loved.  About eight years ago, I read Karen Joy Fowler’s novel The Jane Austen Book Club and decided it would be fun to found a book club like that, dedicated to reading all the novels in order. I roped several neighbors into the group, and during our Pride and Prejudice discussion, a question came up about the entail, that legal device that’s so important to the inheritance issues in P&P. The next day, trying to research this question online, I decided to drop in on the Republic of Pemberley, the largest online Austen fan site, which I’d vaguely heard of but never visited.  I fell instantly in love with this community of fellow Austen obsessives  and started spending inordinate amounts of time there, to the point that I would get embarrassed when my husband caught me at it – after all, I was supposed to be hard at work on a book on a completely different subject.  One day, I was telling him about this wonderful community and its many quirky personalities, and he said, “You should write a book about that.” It took me a few years, but eventually I did.

TALKING JANE AUSTEN WITH ... EMILY BRAND, AUTHOR OF MR DARCY'S GUIDE TO COURTSHIP

Thanks Emily for taking the time to answer my questions and agreeing to talk Jane Austen with me. This is my first curiosity:  when and how did you come to write a Jane Austen sequel?

Mr Darcy’s Guide to Courtship is more of a prequel: it is set shortly before the events of Pride and Prejudice, and imagines the advice that Darcy might have given Bingley on how to attract a suitable lady before he is let loose on Hertfordshire’s female population.

As an historian, my recent research has focused on the real seduction manuals – often just collections of what we’d now call ‘chat up lines’ – that were in circulation in and around Jane Austen’s lifetime. Many of them are really entertaining, and I wanted to bring them back into public view somehow. Austen’s books have been a part of my life for as long as I can remember, and it only seemed right to reveal how men really went about winning a lady’s affections through the medium of Regency England’s most eligible bachelor himself!

TALKING JANE AUSTEN WITH ... VICTORIA GROSSACK & GIVEAWAY OF THE HIGHBURY MURDERS

Victoria Grossack studied Creative Writing and English Literature at Dartmouth College, and is co-author with Alice Underwood of the Tapestry of Bronze series, novels based on Greek myths and set in the late Bronze Age. She is also the “Crafting Fabulous Fiction” columnist at www.writing-world.com. Visit her website at www.tapestryofbronze.com, or contact her at tapestry (at) tapestryofbronze (dot) com.

Welcome on My JA Book Club, Victoria ! I’m very happy you’ve joined our on line club and you accepted to talk Jane Austen with me.

Your Austen-inspired novel, The Highbury Murders,  is  a  mystery  set it in Emma Woodhouse’s village.  Why Highbury and not Mansfield Park or Longbourn? Is Emma your favourite Austen novel?

First, why Highbury?  I chose Highbury for several reasons. Emma has been described as a detective story without a body – however, there actually is a body, and hence the potential for a mystery. Second, Emma’s active imagination makes her a natural detective. 

Secondly, is Emma my favourite Austen novel? That’s extremely difficult to answer. There’s a maturity in Austen’s three later works – Emma, Mansfield Park and Persuasion – which you don’t find in the three that were written earlier – Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, and Northanger Abbey. On the other hand, there’s a joy in both Pride and Prejudice and Emma that is absent from the other novels. So, yes, Emma is my favourite but the competition is fierce.