A performance! Twelfth Night was always a festive event for Jane Austen, her family and friends. They loved to brighten up the winter season and celebrate the traditional Epiphany with a variety of parties, balls, children’s festivities, and most especially theatricals. As we might expect, Jane Austen was at the heart of these activities …
Jane Austen wrote very little about Christmas directly, though we may remember such fictional moments as the “fine family piece” of a Christmas scene in Persuasion, with little girls cutting up silver paper and little boys reveling over plates of brawn and cold pies, and Lady Russell being annoyed by the noise. Or Mr. Elton …
With my first published book (Onoto Watanna, a biography of my novelist grandmother, in 2001), there was no such thing as a blog tour in existence, so I was innocent of the subject. The book was published by a university press, and since my grandmother was something of a pioneer, being the first Asian American …
My panel talk was over, and was well received; anxiety over the Author Signing event was relieved by the fun and delight of friends old and new coming up to buy my book and chat. So now there was nothing left to do at the JASNA annual general meeting in Williamsburg, VA, but to let …
It’s not all that easy to get to Williamsburg, VA from Los Angeles – there are no direct flights, so it was 13 hours door to door, on two planes, a train, and two Ubers. Might have got as far as Rome in that time; and I arrived exhausted and uncertain about whether it was …
Here, for Austen Variations readers, is another excerpt from my new novel, The Bride of Northanger, which has now been in the world for four days, having been published last Thursday! I posted an excerpt that day, the story’s opening, which takes place on the evening before the wedding of Catherine Morland and Henry Tilney. …
Publication Day, and my book The Bride of Northanger is unleashed upon the world, in all its adventurous, Gothic, mysterious, romantic, historical, humorous and Austenesque splendor. Or so it is in my own mind, for what mother does not admire her own sucking child? Jane Austen did herself. (With much more justification, needless to say, …
Voila, and tra-la! Here is the cover of my new book, The Bride of Northanger… The portrait of the girl is by the French painter Elizabeth Vigee Le Brun, and is of Corisande Armandine Léonie Sophie de Gramont, Countess of Tankerville (1783 – 1865). It was painted in 1800, when she was eighteen, exactly the …
My own “Austen in August” excitement is that I can now announce that I have a new, complete, actual, full length novel coming out, at long last! The title is The Bride of Northanger, and it is a variation – sequel – continuation – riff, call it what you will, on Northanger Abbey, from White …
Lady Catherine was in a very bad mood. As she seated herself at the breakfast table, arrayed in her richly and stiffly embroidered morning dress with its tight lace collar Elizabeth and Darcy could see, by her black looks, that her temper, so far rigidly held in, would not be so for long. She began …
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