I cannot let the day pass without wishing my favorite author Jane Austen a happy birthday. As she herself wrote in Pride and Prejudice (1813):
I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book!
Awhile back I reviewed the Pride and Prejudice DVD. Below is the opening paragraph and here is the link to the piece if you’d like to know more about my feelings for this novelist.
Sex and status are classic themes for British television drama. Not the least when we’re talking about a six-part adaptation of what is widely considered the most published novel in the history of literature. Pride and Prejudice was published in 1813 and has been selling ever since to generation after generation of thrilled fans. If you are among the millions of readers in the world who have been exposed to this perennially popular writer, you may agree that Jane Austen’s six books have an unparalleled magic. The wit, the syntax, the love denied and then fulfilled, the class struggle, the eccentric characters, women resisting 19th Century crystal ceilings - it is hard to believe that her work is 200 years old.
I love all of Jane Austen’s books, even her childhood scribbling. I am happy to read them again and again – and not just because of my faulty memory. Her work, as I say above, is magic.
Comments