Diana Birchall

Now retired from her career as a story analyst at Warner Bros Studios, Diana is the author of Jane Austen sequels Mrs. Darcy's Dilemma, The Bride of Northanger, In Defense of Mrs. Elton, Mrs. Elton in America, and the forthcoming The Darcys in Venice, as well as Austenesque plays, stories, articles, and pastiche. Diana's scholarly biography of her grandmother, Onoto Watanna, the first Asian American novelist, was published by the University of Illinois Press. Diana grew up in New York City, and now divides her time between California and England.

Most commented posts

  1. 12 Days of a Jane Austen Christmas: A Book of Days — 62 comments
  2. Throwback Thursday with Diana Birchall — 59 comments
  3. Leap into Love – an Excerpt by Diana Birchall — 55 comments
  4. The Darcys and Lord Byron in Venice, Part 8 — 53 comments
  5. Persuasion 200: Mary Musgrove’s Complaint — 48 comments

Author's posts

Mary Crawford’s Harvest by Diana Birchall

  The only mention of the word harvest in Jane Austen’s major novels, as far as I can discover, takes place in Mansfield Park.  Not surprisingly, her “harvest scene” provides us with another opportunity to observe the cleverness and deliberation with which Jane Austen reveals her characters through subtle details. Each of the two paragraphs …

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Harriet Smith: Caught in a Maze

Pride & Prejudice Variation Entangled Monica Fairview

Mrs. Isabella Knightley looked with concern at her guest. Pretty little Harriet Smith was usually the most cheerful, happy natured young lady, but just now she was leaning on the sofa in a despondent, listless posture, and not seeming to even notice Isabella’s five children, who were romping at their feet, in various states of …

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Blossoming Love: The Rosarian (Excerpts from Mrs. Darcy’s Dilemma)

While ruminating on our theme for June, Blossoming Love, and having written a piece on the subject already (“I have always been indifferent to flowers,” June 3), I was reminded of roses, and the fact that in my first Austenesque novel, I wrote a character who was actually a Rosarian. He was a minor character, …

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Blossoming Love: “I am naturally indifferent to flowers.”

A Northanger Abbey story, and the myth of Hyacinthus It was an awkward morning in Milsom-Street. It had been arranged that the Allens would deliver Catherine from their Bath lodgings to General Tilney’s superior ones, in time to join the family for breakfast, and then make ready for the journey to Northanger Abbey. This departure …

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Jane Austen and Confinement

Are mothers in Jane Austen good or bad?

Jane Austen was never confined – at least, not in the sense of experiencing pregnancy, childbirth, and “lying-in.” She had plenty of opportunity to see other women  undergoing confinements, at close quarters, as  several of her sisters-in-law had large families. Both Edward Austen Knight’s wife Elizabeth and Frank Austen’s wife Mary died after having eleven …

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Sonnets and Bonnets by Diana Birchall

I take a personal interest in this month’s theme of Sonnets and Bonnets, because as it happens I am the daughter and the wife of poets. My father, Paul Eaton Reeve, was a fairly well-known avant-garde Greenwich Village poet who did most of his writing and publishing in literary magazines in the 1930s and 1940s. …

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A Collection of Comeuppances

Jane Austen was a most judicious punisher of her least deserving characters. She had a high moral sense, as well as a wicked wit, and loved to mete out comeuppances as well as happy endings. Her comeuppances are generally very plausible and very fair, and the ones that might not seem entirely satisfactory, generally have …

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Love – and Hate, in Two Austen Novels

Love and hate.  Jane Austen wrote about them both, sometimes in the same novel, and about the same characters. The love/hate relationship that first comes to mind is of course that of Darcy and Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice. The word hate is used several times in describing Lizzy’s early prejudiced feelings about Mr. Darcy. …

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Celebrating Valentine’s Day at Pemberley

Mr. Darcy put down his book and his face lighted as his wife entered the library. “So, you have found me,” he greeted her with a smile. “That is not a matter of wonder. Where else would you be likely to be found, such a dark wet day as this, save the library?” “Very true, …

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Retrospective and Prospective

This month, we look back on our recent work, especially at books published during 2020. I fell a little short of that date, as my last published book came out in October 2019. The Bride of Northanger is a sequel to Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, and it follows her heroine Catherine Moreland into her marriage …

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