Welcome 2014 ~ The Year of 'Mansfield Park'

2014 promises to be another important anniversary year for Austen fans, for it was two hundred years ago that Jane Austen published her fine novel, Mansfield Park. Some critics, including biographer Paula Byrne, list this as their favourite Austen novel, it being the text most favored by Cambridge scholars, such as F.R. Levis, who hailed it as one of the greatest English novels ever written.

The novel itself was penned at Chawton Cottage between February 1811 and 1813 but was published in May 1814 by Thomas Egerton, who published Jane Austen's two earlier novels, Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice.  The image on the left comes from a beautiful illustrated edition from 1957, showing Fanny at the window, astonished to see William Crawford coming to call on her.  It is a book about making choices, mistakes and finding love right under one's nose.  In this way, Mansfield Park is not very different from Austen's two previous novels, yet this book gives us a real insight into what it was to be a woman without any financial means, completely at the mercy of rich relations, who deserve little respect or admiration.  It is certainly a book to brush away those winter cobwebs and get you thinking.   

So, if you have never read Fanny Price's story, now is the time. There will be no better way to celebrate Austen in 2014.  Happy New Year everyone!

Merry Christmas Everyone!

We at the Jane Austen Society of Ireland would like to wish all our members, and Austen fans everywhere, a very merry Christmas and a peaceful New Year.

This was the year that we celebrated the bicentenary anniversary of the publication of 'Pride and Prejudice', so if you haven't yet read Austen's hugely popular novel, you still have a week or so to finish it before the end of this anniversary year.

This was also the year that we established the Jane Austen Society of Ireland, held our premiere event in the beautiful Farmleigh and published our first society journal, The Austen Gazette. We'd like to thank you all for the support and encouragement in all of these endeavours and look forward to more events and publications in 2014.  

But the Austen treats are not over yet.  Remember to tune in to BBC One to catch 'Death Comes to Pemberley', a sequel to Austen's novel, which was written by P.D. James and directed for television by Daniel Percival.  The story will be told over three nights this holiday season and promises to have us all enthralled.  

Merry Christmas Everyone!


Death Comes to Pemberley starts on BBC One on 26 December at 2015 GMT and continues on the 27 and 28 December 2013

Happy Birthday Jane!

December 16th is the day, more than any other, that we think and remember Jane Austen, for that was the day that she was born.

On the following day, December 17th 1775, Rev. George Austen wrote to Mrs.Walter (wife of his half-brother William Hampson Walter.)

"You have doubtless been for some time in expectation of hearing from Hampshire,and perhaps wondered a little we were in our old age (he was 44 and his wife Cassandra was 36!!) grown such bad reckoners but so it was, for Cassy certainly expected to have been brought to bed a month ago: however last night the time came,and without a great deal of warning,everything was soon happily over.We now have another girl,a present plaything for her sister Cassy and a future companion.She is to be Jenny,and seems to me as if she would be as like Henry as Cassy is to Neddy. Your sister thank God is pure well after it..."


Jane (not Jenny) was privately baptised the day after her birth but,as the winter of 1775-6 was one of the bitterest for many years, she was not taken to Steventon Church for a public christening until April 5th 1776.

By Eileen Collins Cork.

Introducing the Arrival of The Austen Gazette

At last we have our own dear child!  It is with great pleasure that we can announce the arrival of our very own JASI newsletter, The Austen Gazette.  
It is reserved for signed-up members only, but I can tell you that it includes a wonderful list of Austen related gift items that might come in handy this Christmas, compiled by Society Secretary, Sinead Ryan Coughlan. There is also a look at a very unique Austen website that is sure to improve your prose style.  
Some of our enthused members wax lyrical about their varied Austen experiences this year, and we even get a sneak glimpse into Mr Collins's little black book.  
If you are curious to find out more, you can join the Society today, and we will email your copy of the Austen Gazette straight away.  Joining the JASI is simple; just click on the 'Membership' link on the right of the page.  
Let me take this opportunity to thank all the contributors to our very first issue of the Austen Gazette; we really do appreciate you taking the time to send in pieces for publication, and a special thanks too to John Deering for supplying us with this very festive cover illustration.  John was very eager to assure us that no Austen novels were harmed in the making of this newsletter.  What a relief! Happy reading everyone! 

Celebrating Jane Austen's Birthday this December

 Jane Austen was born 238 years ago this December.  What better way to celebrate the birth of our favourite author than to go along to the Gate Theatre, Dublin, next month, with the JASI, to see the latest production of Pride and Prejudice, in this the bicentenary year of that novel's publication.
But wait!  Exciting News!  The lovely people at The Gate Theatre have organised a speaker to come and talk to us before the evening performance of Pride and Prejudice on the 5th December.  Now you have a very good reason to book your tickets on that particular evening and to come along and meet your fellow JASI members after the show in the bar.  Of course, this means that you will need to be there at 6:30, an hour before the play begins.
The pre-show talk will be given by Lori Comerford, the very she who is currently presenting a course on Jane Austen every Monday evening in University College Dublin.  I am sure she will have us enthralled!  So do hurry and book your ticket for The Gate on Thursday, December 5th; it promises to be a wonderful evening.  What a fine way to celebrate Jane Austen's birthday!

Here is the cast list, just to whet your appetite:

We are excited to announce that Sam O’Mahony will play the role of Mr. Darcy.
Lorna Quinn will play Elizabeth Bennet, Eleanor Methven will play the part of silly Mrs. Bennet, while her long suffering husband, Mr. Bennet, will be played by Stephen Brennan.
Mark O’Regan will play Elizabeth’s cousin Mr. Collins.

Other cast members include:
Aoibhinn Garrihy as Jane Bennet; Rachel Gleeson as Mary Bennet; Kerrie O’Sullivan as Kitty Bennet; Genevieve Hulme Beaman as Lydia Bennet; Stephen Swift as Mr. Bingley; Rebecca O’Mara as Caroline Bingley; Maeve Fitzgerald as Charlotte Lucas; Barbara Brennan as Lady Catherine de Bourgh; David O’Brien as Sir William Lucas; Michael Ford Fitzgerald as Mr Wickham and Jonathan Delaney Tynan as Colonel Fitzwilliam.
This production will be directed by Alan Stanford.
Set & Costume Designer Bruno Schweng

Lighting Designer James McConnell
Tickets: Previews €25 | Opening Night €32 | Monday: ALL TICKETS €25 | Tuesday-
Thursday: €32 | Friday-Saturday: €35 | Matinees €25 |
Booking www.gatetheatre.ie or 01 874 4045

Austen's Happiest Hour

It is difficult to declare with complete certainty when Jane Austen was happiest, but I would hazard a guess that it was sometime around now, Halloween that is, on the publication of her first completed novel, 'Sense and Sensibility'.  On October 30th, 1811, Jane Austen's book about sisterly love and the right and wrong way to behave in matters of romance, was first published  by Thomas Egerton of the Military Library publishing house in London.  A connection through Austen's brother, ever the champion of his sister's talent, made publication possible in the first place.

Very few Austen fans today are aware that we owe great thanks to this small publisher of military texts for giving Austen her first taste at being a 'proper', published author.

Of course, the book itself took a long time to emerge as the novel that we know and love today.  It began years earlier, written as a collection of letters in novel form, under the rather simplistic title, 'Eleanor and Marianne' when Austen was but nineteen years old.   But after the death of her beloved father, Jane, her sister and mother, spent a nomadic existence moving from place to place, giving little opportunity, or impetus, for Austen to return to this first novel.

Luckily for us, she somehow returned once again to the characters who reveal so much about what it is to fall in love, and rewrote the novel that is both witty and brutally honest about the powerlessness of dependent, unmarried women in the Georgian period; something that Jane and Cassandra Austen knew all about.
Respectability was all important in this period, and there was no knowing the damage that could be done to a lady's good name if it became generally known that one was a writer of 'novels'.  And so Jane Austen never put her name to the books during her lifetime, only allowing the novels to be written, 'By a lady'.  What a strange, egocentric, celebrity-crazed world we live in now by comparison!

So, spare a thought this Halloween, for Jane Austen, and how she delighted she must have been to see her beloved 'Sense and Sensibility' finally in print, and how difficult it surely was to keep this secret from all the world, while taking so much pride in her accomplishment.  Oh, how things have changed...

Author - Michelle Burrowes!

P.D. James on Jane Austen ~ Trinity College Dublin

We took our seats in the sold out old, rotund, examinations hall in Trinity College this evening and the excitement was palpable. Eyes eagerly watched the small side door, where surely the guest of honour, now in her ninety-third year, would at some point emerge. In time, she did just that to a rousing standing ovation and much applause. Yes, P.D. James is read and admired in Ireland too.

For about an hour, she spoke about her novels and those of Jane Austen, declaring that the latter's books all have the same basic Cinderella plot-line, but were written by a genius. Her love for the eighteenth century novelist was clearly apparent, as she smiled broadly every time she pondered Lizzy or Jane. She surprised us all by suggesting that 'Emma' contained many elements of the crime novel, with hints and clues as to Jane Fairfax's secret admirer, amongst other things.

She was happy to answer audience questions, though one enthusiastic gentleman managed to speak for about five minutes without actually asking a question at all! Another man asked if she had decided to write about Pride and Prejudice, because she was so old now and out of touch with the world (!) She was quick to put pay to that line of questioning and said that she was very much still living in the real world, and announced that she was in the early stages of writing another book featuring her well-loved detective, Adam Dalgliesh, much to the delight of the loyal fans in the audience, who whooped and cheered excitedly.

And then it was announced that there would be a book signing, so people stood in line to get an autograph and have their photos taken with one of the most respected writers of our time.  When my turn came, and  I told her how much I had enjoyed her book, she said, ' I am so glad; I really enjoyed writing it'.  

And as I set off home, clutching my signed, hardback copy of 'Death Comes to Pemberley', I couldn't stop smiling as I thought of how alike Phyllis and Lizzy Bennet are, both witty and beguiling, with a lively mind and happy temper, and then how P.D. James and Jane Austen might just have been a little alike too, and I suddenly felt a little closer to both writers, and grateful that such clever women decided to give their lives to writing all those wonderful books for us to enjoy.  A happy thought indeed!