The Austen Project, launched last year, asks prominent contemporary writers to reimagine Jane Austen’s classics in modern times. (Thus far, we’ve seen Joanna Trollope’s Sense and Sensibility and Val McDermid’s Northanger Abbey.) In perhaps the most significant adaptation yet, Curtis Sittenfeld has announced that her Pride and Prejudice will feature a 39-year-old Jane Bennet. After all, Jane (23 in the original novel), is “pretty much teetering on the edge of spinsterhood.”
Jane at 40
The Other Bronte Girl
At long last, Anne Bronte's gravestone has been been corrected.
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A Decoy for Attention
“The first sentence, itself described as a ‘decoy for attention’ in a 1930 story on the new art, is a lure within a lure, created in a new economy increasingly predicated on commercial diversification and instant appeal, in a book market that had never been so populated.” Electric Lit takes us through the history of the novel’s first sentence. Pair with our essay on the art of the opening sentence.
The Art of the Novella
Taylor Antrim at the Daily Beast explores the art and business of the novella, and offers up a few recent “unexpectedly revelatory” suggestions.
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“The Most Awesome Book Cover”
"Creating a unique package for a book is really about making potential readers see the book as a singular thing in a sea of sameness. Something that has a soul." Jason Booher talks with Slate Book Review about the process of designing book covers in general and the cover of Forensic Songs, dubbed "the most awesome book cover of the summer," in particular.
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NO MA’AM: Were You Aware Of It?
Who's afraid of Amazonian masterhood?: NO MA'AM is (National Organization of Men Against Amazonian Masterhood).
When James met Wilde
Oscar Wilde: a “fatuous fool,” a “tenth-rate cad,” and an “unclean beast?” According to Henry James, all of the above.