Jane Austen

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Nyssa

Will answer after I've actually read any of her work. I have the Jane Austen: The Complete Collection omnibus on my TBR list.

You might wish to look at the versions in the MR library right here. Probably rather better done than most of the freebie versions at Amazon.

[GoSharks]

Just the omission of Jane Austen's books alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a book in it. -Mark Twain

[anamardoll]

Originally Posted by GoSharks

Just the omission of Jane Austen's books alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a book in it. -Mark Twain

LOL, Twain is trolling the "Classics" thread, too.

[Nyssa]

Originally Posted by HarryT

You might wish to look at the versions in the MR library right here. Probably rather better done than most of the freebie versions at Amazon.

As usual, I'm too late. I bought the omnibus as a New Years present for myself. I rarely think to check here first, even though the MR Library has been invaluable.

[chamekke]

Originally Posted by anamardoll

LOL, Twain is trolling the "Classics" thread, too.

Well, Twain *was* a humorist

He also said: "Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone."

(Which suggests that he liked her, actually. Every time he reads her?)

[crich70]

Originally Posted by HarryT

You might wish to look at the versions in the MR library right here. Probably rather better done than most of the freebie versions at Amazon.

I'm working on an Omnibus version (alas without illustrations) of her books. She died at what we consider a young age (only 41) so I can only wonder how many more books she might have written had she not died when she did.

[anamardoll]

Originally Posted by chamekke

Well, Twain *was* a humorist

He also said: "Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone."

(Which suggests that he liked her, actually. Every time he reads her?)

Considering that I have a long running series on the faults of Twilight and Fred Clark has a similar (and much better) one on the flaws of Left Behind, I wouldn't take it as read that familiarity and repetition of a product necessarily indicates a like of it.

I've tried re-reading P&P several times to see if I'll like it better somehow as I get older, but I feel largely the same as Twain if the "her" in that sentence is fictional Lizzie.

[Barty]

Originally Posted by khalleron

Emma Thompson's adaptation of 'Sense and Sensibility' comes very close to capturing the book.

I confess I've never seen an adaptation of 'Pride and Prejudice' because I think the essence of that book is next to impossible to capture on film. Perhaps if it was narrated by Joanne Woodward like Edith Wharton's 'The Age of Innocence' was.

When the essence of a book is tied so closely to the language, film can't really do it justice.

I feel the same way about PG Wodehouse - although Fry and Laurie's take on the Jeeves stories was enjoyable, it didn't quite capture it.

Yes the Emma Thompson's screenplay directed by Ang Lee was great. Pretty perfect casting too.

I think Scorcese's Age of Innocence relied too much on narration and made it feel too remote, but maybe that was the righ tone.

I like the P&P with Keira Knightley. All the movie adaptations are more sentimental than the books, but hey, Keira is just so damn cute. The best is probably the BBC version with Colin Firth as Darcy.

Fry and Laurie's creation has a different feel than the books. I think I may even prefer it to the original.

On that note, my favorite Holmes is Jeremy Brett.

[khalleron]

Originally Posted by Barty

Yes the Emma Thompson's screenplay directed by Ang Lee was great. Pretty perfect casting too.

I think Scorcese's Age of Innocence relied too much on narration and made it feel too remote, but maybe that was the righ tone.

I like the P&P with Keira Knightley. All the movie adaptations are more sentimental than the books, but hey, Keira is just so damn cute. The best is probably the BBC version with Colin Firth as Darcy.

Fry and Laurie's creation has a different feel than the books. I think I may even prefer it to the original.

On that note, my favorite Holmes is Jeremy Brett.

As with many things, tastes vary. I was reading Wodehouse long before the F&L adaptions, so that's what my expectations were founded on. I did find the series enjoyable on it's own level - quite funny, but I still prefer the books.

Like The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - nearly everyone refers back to the books as the 'gospel' version, but since I listened to the radio show well before the books hit America, I tend to compare the books and movies to that.

P&P adaptations being too sentimental - well, that's what I'm afraid of. P&P is probably one of the least sentimental 'romances' ever. Too much sentimentality would spoil it, IMHO.

I don't think I have a favorite Holmes - I enjoy the Holmes stories, but I don't think I've ever had enough emotionally invested in them to care particularly about the adaptions, as long as they weren't completely messed up. Brett was good - so was Basil Rathbone although many of Rathbone's Holmes movies stray too far afield.

[DMB]

My favourite TV version is this one of Mansfield Park. Fanny and Edmund aren't at all glamorous, Sir Thomas, Lady Bertram and Mrs Norris are all played by excellent actors and the Portsmouth scenes are done well.

[James_Wilde]

You forgot my choice:

All her books lie permanently on my bedside table and/or beside the toilet.

I had to settle for the yearly re-read.

[Namekuseijin]

I would never thought people would prefer to read a telephone directory than Miss Austen. Then again, one can expect anything from crackheads, like listening to noise and eating junk.

[Richey79]

Really enjoy Jane Austen: - you find something new every time you read (the major novels, anyway), and I often find myself comparing people in real life to her characters.

As for adaptations, I would heartily recommend 'Lost In Austen'. It's about a modern heroine who steps through a door in her bathroom into the world of Pride and Prejudice. She finds herself unintentionally meddling in the plot of the novel. The writing and humour are much more enjoyable than the plot sounds, I promise.

[MaggieScratch]

Originally Posted by DixieGal

I voted #2, because while I detest Austen, the addition of zombies really livened up a boring story about girls trying to get men to marry them.

And yet Elizabeth Bennet turned down TWO very eligible proposals of marriage: one from a man who was to inherit her family home--which would protect her and her sisters and mother from becoming homeless in the event of her father's death--and one from a man of excellent fortune and high social standing. Golddigger!

It helps to understand that in Jane Austen's time (and she was writing for a contemporary audience--late 18th/early 19th century to be specific) the general sentiment was expressed by Charlotte Lucas, in indirect narration: marriage was the only honourable provision for well-educated young women of small fortune. Elizabeth Bennet swam against the stream* when she refused those two gentlemen. She refused them, though they offered her a lifetime of security, because she could not respect them--Mr. Collins, for obvious reasons; Mr. Darcy because he "had been given good principles, but left to follow them in pride and conceit," and he had to be humbled and learn that the world was not there to cater to him. To put it in terms from a more recent work, she made him want to be a better man.

Both Elizabeth and Darcy have to learn and grow. She has to learn to not depend quite so much on first impressions and that people are not as easily read as she thought.** When they do learn their lessons, they are then fit to come together--and they are so wonderfully complementary. They really are one of the greatest, best-matched romantic couples in literature.

All this being said, P&P is currently probably my fourth favorite out of Austen's six novels. You don't want to get me started on Persuasion.

One of the things for which we read great literature is to, as Atticus Finch put it (speaking of great literature--and Harper Lee wanted to be "the Jane Austen of southern Alabama," btw), allow us to crawl inside someone else's skin and walk around in it for a while. Literature teaches us to look outside ourselves and see the world from different perspectives. (That's one of the reasons why diversity in literature is important.)

Jane Austen is one of the great writers who understood people and viewed them unsentimentally, and through her eyes we can learn about others and, in doing so, about ourselves.

*As did Jane Austen herself. She refused a very eligible offer of marriage from a young man who was heir to an estate. Actually, she accepted him and then broke it off the next morning. She probably accepted him, though she did not love him (nor he her), because to marry him meant she would have been able to offer her mother and sister a home when her father died. As it was, the ladies ended up bouncing from lodgings to lodgings in Bath and Southampton until Jane's brother Edward, who had been adopted by rich, childless cousins, offered them a cottage that he owned to live in. The security of that home allowed Jane to rewrite and publish two early works (S&S and P&P) and write three others of sparkling wit and genius (MP, Emma, Persuasion). She also did some reworking of NA, which was published posthumously.

**It's kind of funny to carefully read Wickham's early comments to Elizabeth about Darcy. He says he can't publicly badmouth Darcy because he had too much respect for the memory of Darcy's father, but as soon as Darcy goes off to London, he's blabbing about it to everyone who will listen. Only Mr. Bennet seems to notice.

[estelle58]

Originally Posted by odiakkoh

#6: Never picked up any of her books

Haven't purposely avoided her but haven't purposely pursued her books either.

Same here