Sense and Sensibility

There's a moderately interesting article about Sense and Sensibility in the Telegraph which is inspired by the BBC's new adaptation of the book. Quite rightly, it seeks to set the record straight about the darkness that Jane Austen was capable of:

Yet I can never read Sense and Sensibility without it sending a shiver down my spine. I don't recognise this as a "wonderfully entertaining tale of flirtation and folly", as one edition bills it.
Instead absent fathers, inadequate mothers, ambitious women on the make, financial insecurity, near-fatal illness and abandonment stalk this book. It should be taken only with a large glass of whisky on a stormy night, when Dostoevsky seems too much of a giggle.
Of course, Sense and Sensibility can be very funny: Marianne's conviction that her would-be suitor Col Brandon, a flannel- waistcoat-wearing 35-year-old, is ancient and decrepit skewers the workings of the 17-year-old mind exactly - Austen began a version of this novel in 1795, at just 20. But from the beginning, poverty, desertion and grief lurk darkly at the edges.
The Dashwoods are thrown out of a home they love, become dependent on the charity of a distant relation, and Elinor's love affair with Edward Ferrars is thwarted. All before we reach Chapter Five.

I recently re-watched the most excellent BBC version of Pride and Prejudice and found myself more struck than ever by the elements darkness. Maybe it's due to my advancing years, but Lydia's downfall and the seduction of Darcy's sister disturbed me more than normally, and characters such as Lady de Bourgh and Mr Collins came across as grotesque rather than humorous. I'm also gradually seeing a darker side to Mr Bennet too.
For those who like such things, there's also a Sense and Sensibility quiz in the Telegraph:

1 - A possible suitor is 35 years old. You think he is:
a) Wise, interesting and kind, with much to commend him
b) Far too ancient, feeble and infirm at that age to be interested in romance
c) He's a man. What's not to like?

Austen in the News

From the Times:

Mr Lassman, 43, had spent months trying without success to find a publisher for his own novel Freedom’s Temple. Out of frustration – and to test whether today’s publishers could spot great literature – he retyped the opening chapters of three Austen classics: Pride and Prejudice, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion.
He changed only the titles, the names of the characters and his own name – calling himself Alison Laydee, after Austen’s early pseudonym “A Lady” – then waited for the offers to roll in.
Instead he received yet another sheaf of rejection letters, including one from Penguin, which republished Pride and Prejudice last year, describing his plagarised chapters as “a really original and interesting read” but not right for Penguin.
(snip)
Mr Lassman concocted his plan after returning from the Greek island where he had been writing his own novel and found himself facing a brick wall. “I was having a hard time getting it published and I was chatting to friends about it, saying I wondered how Jane would have fared today.
“Getting a novel accepted is very difficult unless you have an agent first, but I had no idea at the scale of rejection poor old Jane suffered.”
The literary agency Christopher Little, which represents J.K. Rowling, regretted that it was “not confident of placing this material with a publisher”. Jennifer Vale of Bloomsbury publishers turned down Northanger Abbey,renamed Susan, saying “I didn’t feel the book was suited to our list.”
The one publisher to recognise the deception was Alex Bowler, assistant editor at Jonathan Cape. His reply read: “Thank you for sending us the first two chapters of First Impressions; my first impression on reading these were ones of disbelief and mild annoyance, along with a moment’s laughter.
“I suggest you reach for your copy of Pride and Prejudice, which I’d guess lives in close proximity to your typewriter and make sure that your opening pages don’t too closely mimic the book’s opening. After all, there is such a thing as plagiarism and I’d hate for you to get in any kind of trouble with Jane Austen’s estate.”
Last night a spokeswoman for Penguin admitted that Mr Lassman’s submission may not actually have been read. She said: “We don’t take anything that is not agency-led, so I doubt the person would even have read it. I can’t comment on this individual case but I don’t think we have done anything bad.”

Another Jane Austen Story

From the Telegraph:

A picture claimed to be the only oil portrait of Jane Austen is to be sold in America because opposition from the National Portrait Gallery which refuses to support its authenticity makes it harder to sell in this country.
Henry Rice, the owner of the disputed portrait and a sixth generation descendant of England's favourite woman novelist, said yesterday that it was "a scandal" that the picture would be lost to Britain. He also said that he was fed up with "effectively being called a liar" by those who questioned the painting's origins.
The portrait purportedly shows Austen at the age of 13 or 14 in 1788 or 1789, looking a little chubby with a joke playing about her lips in a flowing white dress and holding a green parasol. It is thought to have been painted by the British society painter Ozias Humphrey who has placed his subject walking in fields near her family home in Hampshire.
(snip)
The portrait, measuring 5ft by 3ft, passed down to Mr Rice through generations of the family Jane Austen's brother, Edward. It only came to prominence in 1884 when it featured as the frontispiece of the first published collection of Austen's letters and for 60 years after, it was accepted as the most important image of the novelist.
The National Portrait Gallery attempted to buy it from Mr Rice's father in the 1930s but then in 1948 came a bombshell when Dr R W Chapman, a prominent Austen scholar, dated the dress in the picture to 1805 when Jane would have been aged 30. It was also suggested that Jane's father, an impoverished country vicar, could not have afforded such fine clothes for his third child and that it was possibly a portrait on Jane's distant cousin, Jane Motley Austen.
Since, experts' opinions have raged back and forthand on five occasions, Mr Rice offered to sell the picture to the NPG but the gallery declined.
In 1998, Jacob Simon, a curator at the NPG, revealed that during a restoration, the lining of the picture had been removed and revealed a tax stamp paid by the canvas supplier - "Wm Legg, High Holborn, London". Mr Simon said that Legg was recorded as working in Holborn for only four years from 1802, which would put Jane in her late twenties, not at all like the young girl in the portrait.
Mr Rice claimed yesterday that fresh research in the last 10 years - notably by Professor Claudia Johnson of Princeton University and Brian Southam, chairman of the Jane Austen Society - backed his claims that the portrait was genuine. He said that the date of the tax stamp was "not reliable"and that it had been found that Jane had a cousin at the court of Marie Antoinette in France who sent fashionable cloth to the Austen family for dresses.
Mr Rice said: "This picture has never left out family and has always been a portrait of Jane. Effectively we have been called liars.

The horror!

From the Times:

Having been depicted as a romantic heroine in the film Becoming Jane, Britain’s best-loved author has been given a makeover by a publisher.
According to Wordsworth Editions, which sells millions of cut-price classic novels, the only authentic portrait of Jane Austen is too unattractive.
Helen Trayler, its managing director, said: “The poor old thing didn’t have anything going for her in the way of looks. Her original portrait is very, very dowdy. It wouldn’t be appealing to readers, so I took it upon myself to commission a new picture of her.
“We’ve given her a bit of a makeover, with make-up and some hair extensions and removed her nightcap. Now she looks great — as if she’s just walked out of a salon.”
[Dixit Zadok: The mind boggles.]
The only contemporary portrait of Austen is a sour-faced sketch by her sister Cassandra that hangs in the National Portrait Gallery. But the author’s friends and family described her as “very attractive” and “like a doll”, and a niece, Anna, said that Cassandra’s depiction of Jane was “hideously unlike” her.
A Victorian engraving made from that picture formed the basis for the new watercolour, which will appear on the cover of a “deluxe” collection of her works, to appear in September.
Where aesthetics allow, the publisher prefers to use an image of the author on the front cover. Joseph Conrad, Charles Dickens and Oscar Wilde all made the grade, but other literary titans may now be in line for airbrushing.
Ms Trayler said: “Virginia Woolf wasn’t much of a looker. I’m also considering making over George Eliot, who was frumpy, and William Wordsworth, who was pretty hideous. Most poets were really unattractive, with the one exception being Tennyson, who has wonderful bone structure.”
(snip)
Patrick Janson-Smith, a leading literary agent, said: “Portraits of modern authors are airbrushed the whole time, especially American lady authors of a certain age. It’s a shock to meet a writer when the reality falls a little short. We live in a shallow world where authors are increasingly sold on their appearance.”

Curiously, of the Austen siblings, Jane is the only one for whom there is no surviving professional portrait.
And also from the Times:

TV is to turn Pride and Prejudice into a time-travel saga. The broadcaster wants to emulate the success of the BBC One series Life on Mars, in which a detective is catapulted back in time, and build on the triumph of a run of Jane Austen adaptations, featuring stars such as Billie Piper.
In Lost in Austen, Amanda, a chardonnay-swigging West London girl, discovers a bonnet-wearing woman in her bathroom who introduces herself as Elizabeth Bennet. Through a series of accidents, Amanda is transported to Regency England, where she melts before Mr Darcy’s brooding glare. Miss Bennet, meanwhile, breathes life into the modern girl’s useless boyfriend.