Pride and Prejudice - from the sublime to the ridiculous!

My final post for Austen in August is firstly a HUGE thank you to Adam for hosting this incredible event. A whole month devoted to reading, thinking, talking and blogging about JA has been simply delightful.

And secondly I want to share a few bibs and bobs about JA and tie up a few loose ends.

A few weeks ago I discovered there is a Jane Austen app from the Jane Austen Centre where you can receive a random JA quote a day. It's a lovely way to start the day :-)

At the recent Sydney Writer's festival I went to a talk devoted to all things JA, but particularly all about Pride and Prejudice.

Susannah Fullerton was one of the speakers.

Susannah is the President of the Jane Austen Society in Australia and has written a gorgeous book called Happily Ever After: Celebrating Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.

The book is jam packed with quotes, illustrations & photos. A whole chapter is devoted to the famous first lines of P & P.
We discover that P&P has been used as therapy throughout the generations - in the trenches of WW1 & into the bomb shelters of WW2.
Fullerton explores the various BBC series, movie versions & spin-offs are discussed as are the prequels, the sequels, adaptations and spoofs.

Which leads me to my last JA book for the month.

Pride and Prejudice and Kitties: A Cat Lovers Romp Through Jane Austen's Classic by Pamela Jane and Deborah Guyol.
I suspect the title is enough to give you a pretty good idea of what follows, but here are the opening lines just in case you need more information....

"Netherfield Park is marked at last." 
The news caused much romping at the Bennet household for, as every cat knows, a handsome young tom in possession of his own territory must be in want of a mate.
"What a fine thing it would be for any of our five kittens to catch a rich mouse-I mean spouse," said Mrs Bennet."

I'm so glad this readalong prompted me to read Mansfield Park again. Melissa at Avid Reader's Musings hosted a group for those of us (about 10) reading MP which provided further incentive and interest. You can read Melissa's final post here.

It has been wonderful to read all of Adam's posts as well as trolling through all the links over at the master post (as of this morning there were 95 links).

My parting words are thanks to Lizzie and pretty much describe my lifelong love affair with Jane Austen.

"I cannot fix on the hour, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun."