Few writers have seen their work reinterpreted as much as Jane Austen\u2019s. \u201cWe all encounter Austen differently and from the position of where and when we read her,\u201d writes the scholar Jennie Batchelor in the book\u2019s introduction. \u201cHow we read her changes as the world changes around us.\u201d This anthology, a melange of fiction, poetry, essays, and interviews, reflects the diversity of reactions to Austen\u2019s work. Katherine Reay writes of the healing experience of reading the novelist while recovering from a severe injury, while Katie Lumsden discusses the pleasure of rereading Austen\u2019s novels over and over at different stages in her life. Fiction pieces imagine the author and her characters in new, often revisionary arrangements; in Julia Miller\u2019s \u201cGeorgiana Darcy\u2014Pistols at Dawn,\u201d Pride and Prejudice\u2019s Georgiana Darcy exacts satisfaction from the gold-digger George Wickham in the form of a duel, while in Charlie Lovett\u2019s novel excerpt \u201cFirst Impressions,\u201d Austen defends herself against the accusation that she has \u201ca too highly developed interest in fictionalizing [her] acquaintances.\u201d (One particularly meta piece is an Austen update written by actress and novelist Talulah Riley, who starred in the 2005 Pride and Prejudice film adaptation.) Interviewees include Jeff James, the director who brought Persuasion to the stage at the Manchester Royal Exchange Theatre, and Martin Jennings, the sculptor who created a bronze sculpture of Austen for Winchester Cathedral. Numerous poets contribute poems, including \u201cWitch-Wife\u201d by Edna St. Vincent Millay, about a woman who \u201cwas not made for any man, \/ And she never will be all mine.\u201d The range of the contributors leaves the reader with a sense of how important Austen is to writers in particular, who see in her not simply an antecedent or role model but as an old friend who, with constancy and wit, is always there during those transitional moments in life\u2014the very moments that Austen herself wrote about with such precision.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Few writers have seen their work reinterpreted as much as Jane Austen\u2019s. \u201cWe all encounter Austen differently and from the position of where and when we read her,\u201d writes the scholar Jennie Batchelor in the book\u2019s introduction. \u201cHow we read her changes as the world changes around us.\u201d This anthology, a melange of fiction, poetry, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":4981,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4980"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4980"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4980\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}