I. “What is all this about Jane Austen? What is there in her? What is it all about?” —Joseph Conrad to H. G. Wells

I’ve been thinking about Austen again. We haven’t had a new Austen movie since Bush took office (coincidence?) so there’s less smoke blowing around the novels, a clearer of the books as books. According to BookScan, 100,000 copies of Pride and Prejudice sold last year with no help from the movies at all.

In other news, a tearoom in Bath, planning to market Jane Austen teas and coffees (in “distinctively nineteenth-century flavors”) found the name already trademarked… read more »