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The Genius of Jane Austen
The Genius of Jane Austen: Her Love of Theatre and Why She Is a Hit in Hollywood | Paula Byrne
8 posts | 3 read | 15 to read
A radical look at Jane Austen as you've never seen her - as a lover of farce, comic theatre and juvenilia. Jane's World celebrates Britain's favourite novelist 200 years after her death and explores why her books make such awesome movies, time after time. Jane Austen loved the theatre. She learned much of her art from a long tradition of English comic drama and took joyous participation in amateur theatricals. Her juvenilia, then Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice,Mansfield Park and Emma were shaped by the arts of theatrical comedy. Her admiration for drama's dialogue, characterisation, plotting, exits and entrances is why she has been dramatised so successfully on screen in the last twenty years - and these versions are at the centre of her continuing fame, culminating in her celebration on ?10 note. Austen expert and author of The Real Jane Austen, Paula Byrne looks at stage adaptations of Austen's novels (including one called Miss Elizabeth Bennet by A. A. Milne) to modern classics, including the BBC Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion, Emma Thompson's Sense and Sensibility, and the phenomenally brilliant and successful Clueless, Jane's World presents an Austen not of prim manners and genteel calm, but filled with wild comedy and outrageous behaviour.
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kathleenaflynn
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Read the earlier edition of this several years ago for research. Now reading for fun and enjoying it immensely!

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YouBookMe
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Used my birthday Barnes & Noble gift cards to pick up these beauties! Very excited to read them both. 😁

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balletbookworm
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Pickpick

The first 2/3 of Byrne's new edition are excellent overviews of the theatre, playwriting during Austen's lifetime, and her opinion of playgoing as reflected in her letters (tl;dr: she liked theatre, had decided opinions on actors). Byrne starts to fall off in examining the influence of theatre on the novels - 2 chapters examine Mansfield Park; 1 each for Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, & Emma; none for Persuasion or Northanger Abbey.

balletbookworm There is a nice chapter about Austen adaptations on the big screen (and small) but there isn't a good conclusion to the book. 7y
Susannah Great review. Persuasion is my favorite Austen novel, so I think this book might disappoint me. 😔 (edited) 7y
CrowCAH The cover art is neat! 7y
33 likes1 stack add3 comments
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balletbookworm
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Are we reading again?

LauraBrook 😽❤️😽 7y
CouronneDhiver Aw! 😻 7y
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balletbookworm
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This is kind of amazing re: Georgian theatre, but it makes sense. What else were people supposed to do with themselves for entertainment (that was socially acceptable)? As Emma Thompson said in the commentary track for Sense and Sensibility, there wasn't any Telly in those days.

saresmoore I've no idea how I hadn't heard of this book! 7y
balletbookworm @saresmoore it's a new edition. It was originally published in 2003 as Jane Austen and the Theatre but it didn't take off in the US. 7y
saresmoore I think the title change was a good choice, in that case. 7y
emilyesears This sounds like an A+ book. 7y
26 likes2 stack adds4 comments
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balletbookworm
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I did a little retail therapy today (Chaucer-kitteh is not new, he's just a ham 😂)

BookBabe He's so cute! He doesn't seem impressed. 😹 7y
batsy "Fine, I will be the background to this book if I have to" ? 7y
42 likes3 stack adds2 comments
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charl08
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Articles on Austen celebrating 200 years - review of names book just one of them. Love this cover with the books on the hat!

34 likes1 stack add1 comment
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Vikz
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