On Saturday I went to a meeting of my local branch of the Jane Austen Society. I miss a lot of these meetings because I often tend to be working when they happen so I am always extra happy when I can get to one. It is lovely to have a room full of so many Jane Austen enthusiasts and of course the talks are excellent.

I was especially impressed with the talks this month. In the afternoon we heard from architectural historian Amy Frost about the locations used in adaptations of Jane Austen’s work. It is surprising how many of them are just wrong when you actually look at them. I was particularly amused by the locations chosen for Sense and Sensibility – Norland has grown enormously with each new adaptation, while Barton Cottage has shrunk right down. I loved the cottages used in the more recent adaptations but they certainly bear no resemblance to Austen’s description!

The morning talk was also brilliant. It was somewhat more intellectual than a lot of the talks we have – a fact which I very much appreciated. So much so that I was scribbling away throughout the talk and had to pull out my books when I got home to transfer the notes.

This was Anne Toper – Dialogue in Pride and Prejudice: Blunder and Innovation. She was (unsurprisingly!) talking about Austen’s use of dialogue – particularly how infrequently she uses words such as, ‘He said’ or, ‘She said.’ When she does use them it is deliberately for effect – for an example, read the first proposal scene in Pride and Prejudice (chapter 34) and compare the speech attributions with those used when Fanny and Edmund are talking about stars in chapter 11 of Mansfield Park. The intimacy between the characters is entirely different.

I thoroughly enjoyed both talks and loved the feeling that I was properly studying the texts. As ever, I came away completely enthused and thinking that I must make myself more opportunities for similar events.