Tonight I’m going to see an adaptation of Pride & Prejudice at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, one of the best things about visiting Ashland. I’m hoping that it’ll be better than the adaptation I saw at UT this fall, which I have to admit was pretty painful. (Actors who can’t manage British accents should not try to pretend that shouting in a higher-pitched voice is a worthwhile substitute.) Yesterday, I also discovered some exciting Austen news, from Diana Peterfreund, who explains why she loves Persuasion so much, and then reveals the following:

Children’s: Young Adult

Author of the Secret Society Girl series and Rampant Diana Peterfreund’s FOR DARKNESS SHOWS THE STARS, a post-apocalyptic retelling of Jane Austen’s Persuasion, to Kristin Daly at Balzer & Bray, in a good deal, for publication in 2011, by Deidre Knight at The Knight Agency (NA).

This actually makes a lot of sense — much of the literary criticism written about Persuasion focuses on the uncertainty and anxiety evident in Austen’s portrayal of the diminution of the landed gentry, so transposing that class anxiety into a more explicitly dangerous post-apocalyptic world should be really interesting. Looking forward to this one. Diana answers more questions about it here.

Regarding another genius, Hilary Mantel writes about the Shakespearean authorship debate, which she calls “a tale of snobbery and ignorance, of unhistorical assumptions, of myths about the writing life sometimes fuelled by bestselling authors who ought to know better.” Ouch, and nicely put.

Finally, in exciting news for dorks like me, Patton Oswalt is writing a Wash-centric comic set after the conclusion of Serenity.

WSJ: But is there something compelling about the collaborative process compared to the solitary job of writing?

CM: Yes, it would compel you to avoid it at all costs.

…

WSJ: How does that ticking clock affect your work? Does it make you want to write more shorter pieces, or to cap things with a large, all-encompassing work?

CM: I’m not interested in writing short stories. Anything that doesn’t take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing.

I actually didn’t like The Road much — shocking, I know, but I still prefer Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker to just about any mainstream post-apocalyptic novel I’ve read — but I did like this interview quite a bit.

And via Sarah Johnson, I saw this report of a book deal for a new historical fiction series by an academic, set in the eighteenth century, described as:

An utterly riveting, edge-of-your-seat, series featuring an 18th century heroine, Henrietta Lightfoot: courtesan, adventuress, spy and erstwhile murderess. It had all of us here hooked. With potential to become a really popular series, this is a female Flashman who can show the chaps a thing or two, while deliciously rollocking through one of the most interesting and dashing periods in history.

I just finished Heyer’s The Grand Sophy with my undergrads — some of them adored it, some of them hated it. I think we all felt, by the end of our discussions, that the book has flaws that make it difficult for c21 female readers to enjoy without reservations. I enjoy it tremendously, myself, but those last few pages are tough to swallow. I’m guessing that the Lightfoot series won’t necessarily be much more realistic than Heyer’s books, but it would be delightful to read something as rompish as Heyer that doesn’t just flit lightly over any hint of sexuality (or turn it into a threat of violence, ahem, Georgette).

She sat behind a small Lettera typewriter and a cardboard menu listing your options: you had to first chose your language (English or Spanish), type of letter (regular letter for $2, love letter for $3, illicit love letter for $5, postage included), and type of paper (blue, yellow, or onion). Some customers sat down in the chair opposite her and dictated a letter in full; most gave her a few key bullet points and let her abstract the rest. A man stopped by to discuss a business inquiry he was working on—Hofer said she would write it later and send it to him by e-mail.

Compare this to an advertisement written by Laetitia Pilkington, one of the subjects of my dissertation, about her own letter-writing abilities:

If any illiterate Divine, from Cambridge or Oxford, has a Mind to shew his Parts in a London Pulpit, let him repair to me, and he shall have a Sermon, not stolen from Barrow, Tillotson, or other eminent Preachers, as is frequently the Practice, with those who have Sense enough to do it; but Fire-new from the Mint. If any Painter has a Mind to commence Bard without Wit, and join the Sister Arts, I also will assist him. If any Author wants a Copy of commendatory Verses, to prefix to his Work, or a flattering Dedication, to a worthless Great Man; any poor Person, a Memorial or Petition, properly calculated to dissolve the Walls of Stone and Flint which inviron the Hearts of rich men, Prelates in particular; any Print-seller, Lines to put under his humorous, comic, or serious Representations; any Player an occasional Prologue or Epilogue; any Beau a handsome Billetdoux, from a fair Incognita; any old Maid, a Copy of Verses in her Praise; any Lady, of high Dress, and low Quality, such as are generally the Ladies of the Town, an amorous melting delicate Epistle; any Projector a Paragraph in Praise of his Scheme [Ed. note: LP, the original promiscuous blurber!] ; any extravagant Prodigal, a Letter of Recantation to his Honoured Father; any Minister of State, an Apology for his Conduct, which those Gentlemen frequently want; any Undertaker a Funeral Elegy; or any Stone-Cutter an Epitaph; or, in short, any Thing in the Poetical Way; shall be dispatched in the most private, easy, and genteel Manner by applying to me, and that at the most reasonable Rates.

The New Yorker blogger calls this ghostwriting, but I hope the writer setting up her stand in Union Square wouldn’t mind being called a hack, particularly if that meant she could claim literary allegiance with someone as saucy as Mrs. Pilkington.

Some of the writers I study are refreshingly honest about their status as hack writers; Laetitia Pilkington, in particular, details down to the shilling the amount of money she receives for hastily written-up poems offered to the great. Once, she receives two guineas for her troubles and is so thrilled that she tosses them up in the air in glee. One promptly slips into a crack in the floorboards of her rented room, and her landlady won’t let her pull up the boards to get it out. Poor LP. (If you ever have the time to read a three-volume memoir by a mid-eighteenth-century woman writer, go for hers. And read Woolf’s essay about her, too.)

Anyway, I like the message of Barnett’s piece, and as I’m currently in the season of funding applications, it feels pretty applicable to academia as well. I only hope I can hustle half as well as Mrs. Pilkington.

(Did you know that Johnson, Hester Thrale and Boswell all have Twitter accounts?)

I am looking forward to getting the last bits of my schedule settled — those of us who teach in the shiny computer-stocked classrooms also work as proctors in the computer labs, and that schedule gets revised after a week or two of term — so that I can figure out how to shove some fiction writing into my schedule, along with my teaching prep and dissertation work.

A few links for today:

Sarah Eve Kelly on “the matter of detail” in writing historical fiction.

Megan Crewe posts on the results of her survey of writers who recently sold their first books. Short version: the majority of writers sell their first book not because of connections but through a cold query.

The Telegraph reviews a new book on Waugh and the Lygons, the family who apparently inspired Waugh when he created the Flytes.

My favorite Kate Beaton comic (which I will be sharing with my class).

… two Gentlewomen that have made no small Struggle in the World to get into Print; and who are now in such a State of Wedlock to Pen and Ink, that it will be very difficult for them to get out of it.

I’m thinking about stealing that for my “about” page.

By the end of the summer or beginning of the fall I should be beginning to write my dissertation. I’m hoping it’ll give me a new clarity of purpose.

A few good things to report: I’m planning my trip to the 2008 SEASECS meeting in Auburn to give a paper on Charlotte Charke; I’ll be seeing Jerome McGann speak next Friday (more than once!); Thanksgiving approaches, which means a much-needed trip to Oregon to see my parents. The HRC has been incredibly busy for the last several weeks, and so have I. I’m reading Laetitia Pilkington’s memoirs and drilling the irregular future tense stems in French.

Speaking of Oregon, here’s a sad but quirky-sweet tribute to the store cat at Powell’s Technical Books, Fup, who recently had to be put to sleep at the age of 19. I’ve been to that store two or three times and never saw her, which is kind of amazing, since T. claims that my superpower is seeing cats wherever I go. Fup was also the star of an ongoing mini-adventure serial in the Powell’s newsletter, apparently; you can read them here.