This is a really interesting book about Jane Asuten's connections to the theatre, both in her private life and in her juvenilia and novels. The context Byrne gives for the 18th-century stage is really helpful and really draws out the connections between, for example, styles of acting on the London and Bath stages and Austen's depiction of social "acting" in her novel. The analyses are very insightful and I learned a lot that I had never previously considered. I especially liked the section on Emma and its connections to the themes of social mobility and the acting that comes with it that was also explored in the plays Austen saw.

This is an interesting and illuminating look at Jane Austen's keen interest in theatre and plays throughout her life, how that informed her novels, and why it is a crucial part of the success of TV and film adaptations of her work. This book makes me want to reread *Mansfield Park*, a novel I did not like on first reading but might now read with different eyes. I'm also interested in finding a script for A A Milne's play *Miss Elizabeth Bennet*. I am curious why *Northanger Abbey* and *Persuasion* were not mentioned at all, except in passing references while discussing other works; not even to explain why they weren't being discussed.

I was not aware that this was an updated version of a precious book but that made no difference as I had not read the original. Themes related to the theatre run through all of Austen's writing and what Byrne does in this book is examine where those influences have come from and how Austen's writings relate to them. In a world of transient media it is easy to forget that the written and performed word were all that families had for entertainment two hundred years ago. I particularly liked the way that Byrne examined each of Austen's works to show progression in terms of writing style alongside the development of theatre in England. The update section looks at TV and film adaptations of Austen's works and Byrne shows how Austen is not that easy to translate to screen.

Not exactly what I thought it would be, but still quite interesting. Byrne looks not so much at what makes Austen's books so adaptable, but to Austen's enjoyment of theater and how she used stage direction and dialog in her books.

The Genius of Jane Austen is a fascinating book about Jane Austen’s connection to and interest in the theatre and how her reworking of comedic drama and farce in her novels is comparable to the reworking of her novels into film and television in the modern day. The majority of the book is part biographical and historical account of Austen’s theatrical interest and part close reading of her works in relation to major drama and other comedic work of her time. This is a reissue of Byrne’s earlier book Jane Austen and the Theatre in time for the bicentenary of Austen’s death this year, but with a new look at Austen in Hollywood and on TV to close the book.

From the introduction, Byrne sets out to show the importance of specifically English stage comedy to Austen’s work, but also to the influence of drama in her life and her novels. The first section focuses on Austen’s experience of the theatre, giving details about private performances and about professional theatre at the time. It is an interesting introduction to the theatre of the period through the lens of a famous novelist. References to other works bring in a sense of the literary scene of the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century, from how Northanger Abbey uses theatre references to parody Burney’s Evelina to pointing out that Austen saw (and greatly enjoyed) the pantomime of Don Juan that Byron famously mentions at the start of his poem.

The second part of the book is about the theatre and Austen’s novels, with a straightforward structure of chapters focusing on certain novels and then interrogating both theatrical sources and theatrical techniques within these works. Casual fans of Austen and students working on certain texts may skim past to their favourite novels, but as a whole it provides an illuminating if rather detailed explanation of many interesting elements of Austen’s novels and how they relate to other texts and to dramatic conventions and stock figures.

The final chapter—the one which allows the word ‘Hollywood’ to be so prominent in the book—is possibly its most enticing part, a fairly critical look at Austen adaptations that argues that the best adaptations actively ‘adapt’ Austen, keeping the spirit of her comedy, but making it work in a different format. Byrne highlights key flaws in many Austen adaptations and gives an extended discussion of the film Clueless and how it adapts Emma more successfully than most straight adaptations of Emma that is fascinating to read. At the end, this seemingly unrelated chapter is brought together by comparing these less traditional adaptations of Austen with her own transformations of dramatic comedy of the eighteenth century, albeit briefly.

Byrne’s book is a great read for Austen fans, with enough depth and footnotes for further information, but without being an unapproachable book of literary criticism. Instead, it serves as an illuminating account of the early nineteenth-century theatre, an interesting take on various parts of Austen’s novels, and a ‘state of the nation’ type look at film and TV adaptations up to the present day. Even those with more of an interest in the general period and its literature than Austen in particular can find good material from the first section in particular, and the final chapter has interesting points that can be related to other overly adapted writers as well, such as Shakespeare who Byrne compares Austen to from the start.

Paula Byrne takes an incisive look at the works of Jane Austen through the lens of the theatre. Influential critic Lionel Trilling is responsible for the notion that Austen disapproved of the theatre, play-acting, and play-going. Byrne proves, by a close reading not only of the novels but Austen's letters, that nothing could be farther from the case. Austen not only enjoyed going to the theatre (her brother Henry owned a box at one of the London theatres), but she employed theatrical devices in her writing, and she was well-versed in the theatrical repertoire of the day.

This is a fascinating look at Austen from a theatrical perspective. The one novel most frequently cited as proof of Austen's distaste for the theatre is Mansfield Park, in which Fanny Price refuses at first to take part in the amateur theatricals her cousin Tom Bertram proposes: critics take her heroine's attitude for the author's. However, Byrne ably refutes this, showing that it's not the play-acting that Fanny objects to but what the play-acting means in real-life terms, with her betrothed cousin Maria flirting with the rake Henry Crawford, and Mary Crawford doing her utmost to seduce Edmund Bertram, with whom Fanny is secretly in love. Fanny in fact enjoys learning everyone's lines as the prompter, and is eventually encouraged to take the role of the Cottager's Wife.

Of course, there is much more in the book. Byrne also looks at Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Emma, and the various techniques from the theatre that Austen employs in her writing, from set-pieces to dramatic exits and entrances.

I really enjoyed this look at Austen from a different perspective. I'd had this book on my Indigo wish-list for some time, but after seeing Ms. Byrne on an episode of "Austen Wednesdays" from the Jane Austen's House Museum, I was intrigued enough to finally purchase it. I'm so glad I did, and I'm glad to have it to add to my collection of Austen-bilia. (As a side note, if you're interested in all things Austen, check out the "Austen Wednesdays" videos on YouTube. They're wonderful!)