When you need more (about) Jane Austen...

On this page, I've collected together links to
some of my writings about Jane Austen which
have appeared elsewhere,
and shared of my favourite online
Jane Austen resources.

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Is this a portrait of Jane Austen?

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Great video introduction to Austen:
"She was an ambitious and stern moralist... the novel was her chosen weapon in the struggle to reform humanity."

Favourite Jane Austen podcasts:

• First Impressions: why all the Austen haters are wrong

• ​​What Would Jane Do?  by author Julia Golding

I was a guest on "First Impressions," with Kristin, author and Mansfield Park lover, discussing the pleasures and pitfalls of writing historical fiction and Austen fan fiction

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Podcasts which discuss Jane Austen from the perspective of her writing craft and her moral lessons:

• ​​Close Reads discussion of​ Sense & Sensibility  
• ​Close Reads discussion of Pride & Prejudice​

• BBC arts programme featuring  John Mullan discussing Emma
• The Bookening discusses Pride & Prejudice,  Sense & Sensibility, Emma, Persuasion and Mansfield Park  (skip past the extended warm-up banter for some good close readings of the novels)
• Muse and Hearth discusses Emma and Persuasion

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Can't get enough of Fanny Price? Or can't figure out why Austen created such an apparently meek heroine?

• An insightful article by Prof. Mary Waldron
• Professor John Mullan on Fanny Price
• This article by CS Lewis is copyright protected, but really worth finding.
• A long but heartfelt reflectionlareviewofbooks.org/article/simple-girl-improbable-solace-mansfield-p on the solace offered by reading (and re-reading) Mansfield Park

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Reading with Austen: A digital re-creation of the library at her
​wealthy brother's estate at Godmersham Park

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Was Jane Austen a Secret Radical? 
​  I say "No." 

Check out my four-part blog series about 
 Jane Austen: The Secret Radical 

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And my blog series,
​ Clutching my Pearls,
​an exploration of Jane Austen's values and beliefs

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Write like Austen is a website which will let you know which words Jane Austen used. For example, she never used the words "mayhap" or "steed."​

On-line Articles I've written about Austen

​"A Dangerous Intimacy" -- why was it so objectionable for the young people to stage a play at Mansfield Park?

My article about the French emigres who fled to England
​          during the French Revolution
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My article about Mansfield Park and "conduct novels"

My take on Penelope Clay and how I wrote the story about her for Rational Creatures

The Loneliness of the long-distance Austen heroine. 

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Can't figure out why Henry and Mary Crawford are the baddies in Mansfield Park, or wish do you wish that Fanny had married Henry? Check out this thoughtful article which explains "In Mansfield Park, Austen sketches a picture of wit without candor, of intelligence without a moral compass, in both Henry and Mary Crawford. She shows us that, even more than brilliance, virtue is the greatest human good."

The great Fanny Price vs Mary Crawford
debate of 2017 between me and Kyra Kramer, author of Mansfield Parsonage.
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Part One is here at JustJane1813
Part Two is here at Diary of an Eccentric
Part Three is here at  Savvy Verse and Wit
​Part Four is here at My Jane Austen Book Club
Part Five is here at Austenesque Reviews

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​You don't want to miss my parody literary fiction review generator, published at The Rambling:​  Is your novel a "hauntingly observed meditation" or a "delicately textured exploration"? Use the Literary Fiction review generator!
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The Godmersham Lost Sheep Society is looking for books that used to belong to Jane Austen's relations, the Knight family. (Austen's brother Edward was adopted by Mr. and Mrs. Knight.) 
​Click here for more details and images of the book plates which will help antiquarian book lovers identify these books.

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