How I Met Jane Austen

A Very Happy Birthday to Jane Austen today! It was 237 years ago today in 1775 that she was born!

Hope you all are enjoying the Jane Austen Birthday Assembly! I don't believe I've ever told the story about how I "met" Jane Austen and became a fan of hers.

I cannot remember a time when I was, at the very least, unaware of Jane Austen. Her name was a name that I knew of ever since I can remember, but didn't really connect with anything. When I was in high school, I saw that for my junior year I was supposed to read Pride and Prejudice, but I didn't know anything about it; I was a sophomore at the time. I mentioned it to my mom, and my mom, who had already seen the 1995 miniseries starring Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth, started to tell me about it. One day, she started to play the DVD of the miniseries, but I only saw part of it, but enjoyed what I saw.

A while passed and I continued to want to see Pride and Prejudice in its entirety. Luckily, PBS was playing the entire miniseries on Masterpiece Classic over a couple of weeks and my mom and I both watched it together. I fell in love with Pride and Prejudice. I felt like I really understood the characters and I got the story very well. I related to Elizabeth Bennet so much: our personalities were very similar. I had never related to a character like that before. So I couldn't wait to read it junior year!

Yep, this was the book
I bought!

Fast-forward a couple of months (I think? I was still a sophomore) when my mom and I were in Borders (O Borders! How I miss you!). I was looking over at the Jane Austen books when I spied on display a copy of Pride and Prejudice. But it wasn't just any copy of Pride and Prejudice: the cover had, you guessed it, Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth on the front! I thought, "Oh! I have to show this to mom!" So I did and she asked if I was going to buy it. I had a gift card that my grandma gave me, so I used that gift card to buy that copy of Pride and Prejudice. I was starting to read The War of the Worlds at the time (a dull book, indeed! I could not get into it!), and since I wasn't enjoying it, I switched over to Pride and Prejudice readily!

Now, with me, it doesn't bother me so much if I see a movie and then read the book. I find that I can still remember the story well when reading it and I also remember differences from the book and the movie. Plus, if there are any holes in the movie, I can pick up what happened in the book. So, I read though Pride and Prejudice after seeing the miniseries. I couldn't believe how closely the miniseries was to the book. There were whole parts of the book where I could picture exactly what was happening on the page. It was amazing! 

My mom a little while after then bought Sense and Sensibility (the Emma Thompson version), though I wasn't exactly interested in it (shock!) since it couldn't possibly live up to Pride and Prejudice. But once I watched it with her, I was hooked on Jane Austen after that. Then I was reading after Pride and Prejudice Sense and Sensibility, Emma, etc., watching miniseries, movies and what not!
 

So that's how I "met" Jane Austen! How did you meet Jane Austen? Leave a comment telling about your story!

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 God Bless,