Well, the Jane Austen film festival on PBS is over. What will her legions of fans do now to keep Jane in their lives? Never fear, we feel your pain and we’re here to help. You can start by buying as many versions of the books on DVD that you can: www.amazon.com is the place to start. You might not find every version of every book (I hear there’s a 1970s BBC version of Pride and Prejudice starring Christopher Lee as Darcy that’s never been released) but you will find at least one of each.

What’s next? You will definitely want your very own Jane Austen action figure, available from www.mcphee.com.She comes complete with her own copy of Pride and Prejudice, plus a writing desk and a removable quill pen!

Want more? How about a Jane Austen paper doll? There are lots of them out there.At www.paperdolls.com you can get Jane herself plus books featuring the main characters from all six of her novels. At www.marilee.us/paperdolls3.html you will find the excellent Fashions of the Regency and Pride and Prejudice paper doll sets. If you don’t want to wait for your dolls, at www.janeausten.co.uk, the website of the Jane Austen Centre in Bath, England, there is a lovely printable paper doll. Go to the online magazine and click on “Hands On Regency,” then “Hands On Crafts.”

From the Gift Shop at the Austen Centre you can order your own fan and parasol, hatpins and reticules, patterns for period gowns, and cross-stitch kits of Chawton Cottage, an alphabet sampler, and a cross-stitch version of a portrait of Jane done by her sister Cassandra. If you’re a cross-stitcher, you’ll be excited to know that there’s a lovely new sampler called “The Daughters of Longbourn” by The Stitching Parlor, available from your local needlework store.

If crafts aren’t your thing, and you can’t see yourself ever sewing, let alone wearing, a period gown, but you still want to display your sartorial devotion to Jane, try The Republic of Pemberley Shoppe at www.cafepress.com/pemstore. There you’ll find Jane Austen tee shirts, hoodies, mugs, totes, and magnets. You can search by item or book, so if you’d like to see all of the “I (heart) Mr. Darcy” stuff they carry, you can.

Now that you have your “Fickle, very very fickle” tee shirt, what do you do? How about playing a rousing game of Pride and Prejudice: the Board Game, available from www.ashgrovepress.com? Can’t find anyone to play with? (They were probably scared off by your “I prefer to be unsociable & taciturn” tee shirt.) Go back to www.amazon.com and order the Tarot of Jane Austen.

It’s hard not to wonder what Jane herself would have thought of a tarot deck inspired by her books, but if you’d like to start a discussion of that very thing, click over to either the Jane Austen Today blog at www.janitesonthejames.blogspot.com or the AustenBlog at www.austenblog.com. Connect to Janeites all over the world!

Just one last website.We’d heard rumors of a Pride and Prejudice Barbie, and of course we had to check it out (this is our kind of research). We found a website called Crawford Manor, at www.crawfordmanor.com, which features ordinary fashion dolls that have had extraordinary makeovers. Click on “Tyler’s New York Penthouse” and scroll down to find gorgeous “Emma” and “Elizabeth Bennet” dolls. You can’t purchase them—they’ve already been sold—but at least you know what to ask Santa for for Christmas!

Tags: Jane Austen

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 8th, 2008 at 10:52 am and is filed under Fairborn, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response.