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Romance and Reality
 BAFTA and Emmy award winning designer Andrea Galer is exhibiting the key costumes from the BBC drama Miss Austen Regrets, at the Jane Austen Centre from March 21st 2008.
This startling new exhibition will be of interest to all film fans and lovers of bespoke period costume and occupies a large part of the ground floor of the Georgian building.
The exhibition is already generating much interest and the comments book is full of praise for the wonderful costumes and the way the exhibition has been transformed.
All of the costumes are trimmed with hand-made lace from The Power of Hands foundation. More
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How would Jane Austen fare today?
If Jane Austen was alive today she would be a penniless, unpublished author scribbling away in a world oblivious to such classics as Persuasion, Emma and Pride & Prejudice; with all literary ambitions having been dashed by uninterested publishers and short-sighted agents.
At least, this is the assertion put forward by an article in the latest issue of Jane Austen’s Regency World, which is published today. The article, entitled ‘Rejecting Jane’, is based entirely upon letters received from several of the UK’s major publishing houses and literary agencies, who were all responding to sample chapters of Austen’s novels the magazine sent out surreptitiously earlier this year. The chapters, taken from Northanger Abbey, Persuasion and Pride & Prejudice, the latter having recently been voted the number one book the British nation could not live without, were accompanied by a brief synopsis and biographical letter signed by A. Laydee; a play on the original pseudonym Jane Austen used for her earlier works. Only the names of the main characters and title of each book were changed. The article's author David Lassman said,
‘I thought something like this might happen, but I was totally staggered by the response. Here is one of the greatest writers that has lived, with her oeuvre securely fixed in the English Canon and yet out of all the chapters sent, only one recipient recognised them as being Austen’s work and the classic literature they truly are; at best their letters were mildly apologetic about declining the material and at worse completely indifferent to rejecting out of hand what they had in their possession.’
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'Costumes from ITV's Persuasion'
Starting at the end of March a large part of the Jane Austen Centre in Bath will be taken over and re-themed for a major new exhibition.
Entitled 'Costumes from ITV's Persuasion' the exhibition will feature the work of BAFTA award winner Andrea Galer.
Andrea made the costumes for ITV's new adaptation of Persuasion which will be aired in the UK on April 1st.
'We are not just putting in some costumes,' said Centre Director David Baldock, 'we will be completely changing the look and feel of Centre with professional set-dressing, mood music, holograms and a new film. We are all very excited.'
This exhibition marks the first stage in the collaboration between the Jane Austen Centre and Andrea Galer. Future events and developments at the Centre will connect film, costume, fashion, education and crafts.
'Andrea Galer is at the top of her profession in film and costume design. She will be using all her experience and skills to make this exhibition and future developments at The Centre absolutely stunning,' says David Baldock
Press launch Thursday 29th March 1pm-3pm
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