Why are women so obsessed with Jane Austen? This year marks the 200th anniversary of Pride and Prejudice, and the Wall Street Journal reports that novelists/scholars/biographers/filmmakers are ON IT.

Filming begins this month in the UK for an adaptation of Shannon Hale's bestselling novel Austenland, about a thirtysomething girl named Jane who's obsessed with Pride & Prejudice and receives an all-expenses-paid vacation to a British resort where guests live like the characters in Jane Austen novels. The film—which…

Ancestry.com has discovered that Kate Middleton, Duchess Of Cambridge, aka Princess Shinylocks™ and Jane Austen are are eleventh cousins, six times removed. You're thinking: Um, isn't everyone in the English upper crust related? That's just sense and sensibility! Yeah, but lead historian Anastasia Harman is psyched:…

Many of the best-loved works of western literature feature catastrophically unhappy marriages — and, more specifically, women who marry — or almost marry — the wrong man. Why do we love reading about badly-married ladies?

In a recent Guardian UK article, Hadley Freeman compared the modern New York City dating scene (with its rules, regulations, and awkward social customs) to "the ways of ye olde England" and predicts our nation's swift demise if we keep insisting on meeting potential suitors for a beer at a "bowling alley", just as Austen's …

There is always some individual who delights in taking a single audio book and mashing up its millions of words and sounds to create a wholly new version of said book. And so we come to Filthy Pride & Prejudice. Somewhere, an 11-year-old just found his or her new reason for living.

Coming soon: A riches to rags flick, in which two posh sisters have to move in with their (Chicana) aunt after the death of their father. Inspired by Sense and Sensibility and starring Camilla Belle. Possibility of maid jokes: High.

The Black List has released its annual list of the best-liked Hollywood scripts that haven't been made. Let's check out what bullets we likely dodged — and what we would love to see.

Known "perfect stylist" Jane Austen might not have been so perfect after all, says an Oxford prof who studied the novelist's writings and found "blots, crossing outs and 'a powerful counter-grammatical way of writing.'" Also, a dude heavily edited her.

It is not our place to ask why a book has a trailer. But we can wonder whether, after the Pride and Prejudice and Zombies prequel, Dawn Of The Dreadfuls, the regency horror remix crap will end. [Mediabistro]