An exciting opportunity for the summer! Our member Margaret Christmann has been organizing an informal group to go see two productions by the theater group Quintessence at the University of Portland. They are doing both Persuasion and Northanger Abbey.

The dates that have been selected are:
  • Friday, July 27th (7:30pm) for Persuasion 
  • Friday, August 10th (7:30pm) for Northanger Abbey.

The tickets are $20 for Adults and $18 for Seniors and Students. 

If you would like more information and to buy your tickets, please visit the Quintessence web site at http://www.qlit.org/2012_Season.html.

Hope to see you there!
 
 
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Greetings Janeites,

Our next reading group meeting will be held at Kim Higgins's house on Sunday, July 8th at 1 pm. Bill  Boyd and Elaine Blatt will lead the discussion entitled, "Liberal or Conservative Jane?" They will touch on the social classes and their responsibility to society.

If you can attend, please let Kim know directly. See our Contacts page for contact info. Seating is limited, so please RSVP as soon as possible. Also, feel free to bring something for the table. Kim will provide tea, sandwiches, and fruit.

To inquire about  sharing a ride, please see our Carpooling page.

For more 2012 events, please see our Events page.

 
 
Two exciting Austen-related publications are coming out soon!
First, all JASNA members should expect the new issue of JASNA's journal, Persuasions No. 33, in their mailboxes soon. The new edition features essays from the 2011 AGM in Forth Worth, Texas, "Jane Austen:  200 Years of Sense and Sensibility." 

The entire table of contents for Persuasions No. 33 is available online, at http://jasna.org/persuasions/printed/pers33.html.

Also, the July/August issue of the Jane Austen's Regency World magazine will be published and mailed to subscribers within the next couple of weeks. 

The new issue includes articles about:

*A Royal Affair: a new film depicts the scandal that rocked a European monarchy 

*Olympic Jane: as the 2012 Games open in London, we look at the sports that Jane might have played

*Gothic horror: how Jane Austen satirised the latest literary fashion

You can subscribe to Jane Austen's Regency World magazine by clicking here, at http://janeaustenmagazine.co.uk/subscribe.
 
 
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The OxfordWords blog has a brand new feature:  the Pride and Prejudice interactive text analyzer. 

So what's the analyzer all about? As the post states:

"Have you ever wondered how often the word prejudice appears in Austen’s novel? Or which character is most often mentioned next to the word happiness?

Using our interactive text analyser you can break down this well-loved novel to see which collocates (i.e. those words most often appearing alongside a given word) appear with words such as pride and marriage, discover the frequency of key words and character names in each chapter, and even read example sentences from the book. The analyser gives you the opportunity to dive into the text and explore it from a completely new angle."

By the way, the word prejudice appears 5 times in the novel according to the analyzer, and the character Jane is mentioned most often near the word happiness. :)

 
 
Hello all you JASNA OR/SW Washington Fans!

Below is a message/request from our member Debbie Guyol. She is working on a wonderful book project and could use our help!! If you can help her please let her know directly.  Enjoy ~ Janet Rohrbaugh
I reported in January that my co-author and I had an agent for our silly book project, Pride and Prejudice and Kitties, or Purr and Petulance [see the Austencats web site plus an earlier blog post about the site]. Well, now we have a publisher! And we have cat-photos to take. Well, I do anyway (my friend is back East). And perhaps some local Janeites could help. 

  1. Seeking photogenic cats in the Portland area
  2. Regency props? 
  3. Does anyone have household decor that could pass for Regency? (Haha, long shot, I know!) That I could photograph for possible Photoshop use?

Anyone who'd like to share can respond directly to me.

Big thank you!
Debbie Guyol
dguyol@aol.com
 
 
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This week's Movie of the Week:  the 2008 TV miniseries of Sense & Sensibility.

This miniseries was written by Andrew Davies and received consistently high-praising reviews at the time it was released. It has an 8.1 user rating on IMDb, and was also nominated for 2 Emmy awards.

Have you seen this adaptation? What are your thoughts on it? And how do you think it compares to Emma Thompson's Oscar-winning 1995 adaptation?

The Movie of the Week feature (see left) comes from the "Jane Austen Fan Kit" application available for iPads, iPhones, and iPod Touch screens. You can read a prior blog post that includes a gallery of screenshots by clicking here.