In honor of the 200th Anniversary of Pride and Prejudice, Alyssa Goodnight and Courtney Webb from Stiletto Storytime are hosting a blog hop to commemorate it with our Austenesque memories and whatever else we can come up with! I signed up late for this one (last night!), and I realized that I had lots going on today on the blog, but I still wanted to share the love and help fellow lovers of Jane Austen celebrate the anniversary.
Everyone knows how Jane Austen's writings eventually became so influential and inspiring to many of her readers, and my fellow bloggers included! I actually have one and a half Austen reads under my belt, and that is Pride and Prejudice and Sanditon. I have seen several of the Austen movies, however, and the Masterpiece Special of Emma is my absolute favorite. Next up would be Persuasion, then the Northanger Abbey movies. I had bought the boxed set from BBC which has all of the BBC versions of the books, and I couldn't get through some of them, but I haven't tried very hard though. And Austen's last unfinished work, Sanditon, was a bit of a disappointment to me as well!
But for me (horrors!), it is not the famous FitzWilliam Darcy that makes me swoon and go goggly eyed. It's Captain Frederick Wentworth - quite specifically of the 2007 drama of Persuasion.
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| Rupert Penry Jones and Sally Hawkins as Capt. Wentworth and Anne Elliot |
I still need to actually read Persuasion. But I can watch that movie a zillion times over, thank you. I think I should make myself a simple bookmark that says 'Captain Wentworth', then I can secretly smile as I think of him.. and me... I wonder if I can play Anne Elliot as well as Sally Hawkins..
There are TONS of Austenesque sequels out there, and they have been a delight to read! The last Austen-inspired novel I read was The Missing Manuscript of Jane Austen by Syrie James and that is a favorite read of Austenesque drama. I still need to read James' other Austen book, The Last Memoirs of Jane Austen and that is promising to be a good one as well. That's been on my shelf for several years waiting for that special day.
Another one I would recommend is Jane Austen Made Me Do It, which is a collection of Austenesque stories edited by Austen Blogger Extraordinaire, Laurel Ann Nattress of Austenprose.
Other authors I have read and enjoyed are Monica Fairview, Judith Brockmole, Abigail Reynolds, Amanda Grange and Jack Caldwell. There are many others on my shelf, just waiting to be read! Isn't it amazing how one author was able to inspire so much creativity, two hundred years later? What's your favorite Austen inspired sequel? Anyone that I absolutely MUST read?Follow along the Twitter Fun with the hashtag #PP200
I had a few minutes to put this post together, but there are many other participants in the blog hop with some great Austen inspired posts, you can visit them here.
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