Jane Austen News - Issue 122

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A Georgian Doll's House Needs Furniture Number 16 New Street (a Georgian house museum in St Helier, Jersey) is looking for donations for its Georgian doll's house. As you can see the doll's house is looking rather sparse at the moment and in need of a more Georgian style of family and furniture. Jersey National Trust are hoping that it will be filled over time with furniture more in-keeping with the exterior. The Trust say they would love to hear from anyone who would like to donate suitable period furniture. Anyone interested can contact the Trust via catherine@nationaltrust.je

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Comparing Austen to Love Island Novelist Helen Warner made a curious comparison this week. As the ITV hit show Love Island returned to screens in recent days, Warner has said that the cult dating show, which is seen as low-brow "junk" TV by some, isn't that different to the classic works of Jane Austen.

Jane Austen’s novels and Love Island are essentially the same thing; popular entertainment with the sole premise of following a number of couples on their path to finding love.

We can't help but feel that this is over-simplifying Austen's works however. After all, more than one or two people have pointed out that her books are far more than just early boy-meets-girl stories. Northanger Abbey, to look at just one of her novels, is most definitely a satire on the early Gothic novel genre. Having said that, if you'd like to read about the ways in which Love Island has been said to resemble Pride and Prejudice, you can find the comparisons here.

Like Love Island, Austen’s novels take place in a confined society where there’s not much else to do except gossip, dance and chase members of the opposite sex, so any secret liaisons don’t stay secret for very long. Philandering players like John Willoughby, George Wickham, and Henry Crawford are always exposed in the end.

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Austen's Schoolroom in Reading Ready The city of Reading has finally seen its three-year Abbey restoration project completed. We mention this in the Jane Austen News because part of the project has been to see the Abbey Gateway restored, and this is one of the places where a young Jane Austen and her sister Cassandra attended school for a time. Sadly the Abbey Gateway schoolroom doesn't look like the setting Jane would have known (it's been restored to become the home of the Victorian Schoolroom experience, rather than as a Georgian schoolroom), but nevertheless it's lovely to know that this historic building with ties to the Austen family has been successfully preserved for future generations.