Wild Child: On Jane Austen | Hacker News Reader

Wild Child: On Jane Austen

drb.ie

64 pointsapollinaire11 comments

It is much more fun to read the teenaged Jane Austen's "History of England" than to read yet an another article by yet another scholar talking about Jane Austin.

It begins:

"HENRY the 4th ascended the throne of England much to his own satisfaction in the year 1399, after having prevailed on his cousin and predecessor Richard the 2nd, to resign it to him, and to retire for the rest of his life to Pomfret Castle, where he happened to be murdered..."

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Love_and_Freindship_and_other...

Also Dickens' "A Child's History of England", surprisingly good, where he goes over most of it with a childlike glee.

This is the first I’ve heard about the misgivings re Austen’s juvenilia.

Anyway, it’s well worth reading, just to enjoy the sheer fun of her exuberance and cheekiness.

I didn’t understand what ‘classic’ meant until I read Jane Austen, her stuff still feels fresh today. If you haven’t read Pride and Prejudice, I highly recommend it - there’s a lot of perspective to be gained about people there that’s relevant today.

And Henry James!

Unfortunately all of these novels were ruined for me by high school English class.

If you need to forget a bad HS English class, and most of us do, you might watch some of the excellent movies made from the Austen novels. Pride and Prejudice has been made at least 17 times including an excellent Bollywood version and a less excellent zombie movie. Emma has Clueless. These movies are seriously a lot of fun. Then if you really like the movie, you can go back to the books with the movie in mind rather than high school.

I thought Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was absolutely excellent. It sounds like maybe you haven't seen it.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1374989/

I only start reading Jane Austen two years ago, right after my divorce. A line from Pride and Prejudice hit me real hard and made me understand why my marriage failed. It is at the end of the novel, said by Mr Bennet to Lizzy: "My child, let me not have the grief of seeing you unable to respect your partner in life."

P+P is rollicking fun and all the P+P movies are rollicking fun. I do however, prefer Persuasion. And I'll admit that I didn't spot that Clueless (which was awesome) was based on Emma until I heard something on NPR. I just remember thinking at the time, damn this script is tight for a teen movie.

If you like P+P then A Room With A View, EM Forster, is a scream from start to finish. (Well, not) every chapter is titled X Lies To Y.

+1 for Room with a View. Actually all of EM Forster is great.

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