"Austenworld" News: Year-End Roundup

It's been a busy year in "Austenworld" (the universe of JA-related happenings), and another busy year is coming up! Here's a general roundup of recent news:

• First, JASNA's annual present to its members for JA's birthday--the new issue of the electronic journal Persuasions On-Line--is available here. It includes all three of the presentations from the panel "The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly of Sense and Sensibility" (see our Oct. 24 post on the Fort Worth AGM), as well as a short piece by Rochester's David Meisel titled "Seeing Stars for Jane's Birthday." Dave was our speaker at JASNA Rochester's birthday lunch on Dec. 3, and his description and photos of three stars whose light began traveling to Earth in JA's birth year are fascinating!
  

• Enough other "new publications" have come out in the last few months to keep even Persuasion's Lady Russell happy. These include the anthology Jane Austen Made Me Do It, also mentioned in our Oct. 24 post on the Fort Worth AGM (and discussed at the JABC-CNY luncheon at the Colgate Inn on December 10); Lindsay Ashford's The Mysterious Death of Miss Austen, likewise mentioned in the Oct. 24 post, a murder mystery in which JA herself is the victim; P. D. James's Death Comes to Pemberley, a murder mystery thrust upon the Darcy family on the eve of a ball; and Second Impressions, a sequel to Pride and Prejudice by "Ava Farmer" (see the Chawton House Library website for details, and for more information about the Library's excellent work in general).
  

• On her enjoyable blog Jane Austen in Vermont, fellow RC Deb Barnum of JASNA Vermont has recently posted a YouTube link to a segment from a BBC2 program titled "The Many Lovers of Miss Jane Austen," shown in the UK on Dec. 23. (And Jane Austen in Vermont is well worth your attention in general--which is why we're posting this indirect link instead of linking directly to YouTube.) This segment was shot at the Fort Worth AGM and gives some sense of the atmosphere there, although your RC personally wishes that the BBC had paid more attention to our love of JA and less to the commercialization of her!
  

• As we look ahead to 2012, there's an upcoming JASNA event outside NY State but within a day's drive of Syracuse that may intrigue you: the Eastern Pennsylvania Region's "Jane Austen Day" on April 28, to be held at the Society Hill Sheraton in Philadelphia (setting of the 2009 AGM). The topic will be "Elizabeth Bennet: Delightful Creature," and more details are available here. Registration for this will open on Feb. 8, so make your plans now if you're interested.

• Closer to home, don't miss our upcoming JASNA Syracuse meeting on Saturday, Jan. 14, in the Sargent Room of the Liverpool Public Library. The topic will be "Food, Glorious Food!" Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, the Official Spokescat of JASNA Syracuse, takes her responsibilities seriously and is already preparing for this meeting, as you can see. We'll give more details about this meeting in a post soon after New Year's.

• And, finally, we're tremendously excited about this year's AGM, "Sex, Money and Power in JA's Fiction," to be held in New York City in October. (Details available to this point about this AGM in general can be accessed here.) Not only will Co-RC Lisa Brown be reprising her "Dressing the Miss Bennets" presentation (which was a great hit in the Big Apple in September when she presented it to JASNA New York Metro), but RC A. Marie Sprayberry will be giving a breakout session titled "Sex, Power, and Other People's Money: The Prince Regent and His Impact on JA's Life and Work." So we're excited both generally and personally!

Wishing you all a very Happy New Year!!