Cindy Jones - My Jane Austen Summer - A Season in Mansfield Park

He never meets her again. But even so, he never stops feeling her presence.

Long after her life reached its mortal end, she still comes to find me at the musicians' entrance. Wisps of brown hair blow across her eyes, her smile beckons me inside—a timeless, sparkling memory, swirling in my subconscious, folded into my existence. And every time I find her at the stage door, I tell her I love her.

Willis Somerford lives in London. Vampire Priest is his first novel.

After a long while, faint sounds of life rose from the bookstore below.

Austen, Jane. Mansfield Park: Authoritative Text, Contexts, Criticism . Claudia L. Johnson, ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1998.

Fleishman, Avrom. A Reading of Mansfield Park: An Essay in Critical Synthesis . Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins Press, 1970.

Le Faye, Deirdre, ed. Jane Austen's Letters . New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Persuasions: The Jane Austen Journal , no. 28. Susan Allen Ford, ed. Jane Austen Society of North America, www.jasna.org.

Tomalin, Claire. Jane Austen: A Life . New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998.

Wiltshire, John. Jane Austen: Introductions and Interventions . New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.

Wiltshire, John. Recreating Jane Austen . New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Prerequisite to friendship.You must read all six novels. The films are beautiful adaptations but they lack the sparkling narrative that is the essence of Jane Austen. Choose your edition and start reading—or rereading.

Step 1: Getting to know Jane Austen. Not easy since her relatives enforced a posthumous rebranding, establishing Aunt Jane as a saint. Contemporary biographies do a good job of bringing her to life, conveying an awareness of her poverty and dependence, and describing the struggle of her homeless years. Imagine Jane Austen hand-carrying hard copies of her unpublished manuscripts each time she moved. The story of how she nearly married a man she didn't love in order to have food and shelter will establish instant sympathy.

Jane Austen: A Life by Claire Tomalin.

Jane Austen: A Life by David Nokes.

Step 2: Trade confidences. Consider your favorite Austen novel and listen to what she has been saying to you between the lines of her text. For instance, my favorite is Mansfield Park: Jane Austen and I totally agree that it is hard to be Fanny Price in a Mary Crawford world. And we both believe that men should fall deeply in love with intelligent wallflowers.

Which Jane Austen heroine are you?

Which novel would you choose to live in?

Step 3: Do things together.Become a Janeite. Join the Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA) and get involved in the activities of your local chapter. Or visit Jane in England. Gaze upon her writing desk, walk where she walked, find her grave in the floor of Winchester Cathedral, and knock on her door in Bath. Dress in period attire and celebrate at one of the many Jane Austen festivals around the world:

Jane Austen Society of North America: www.jasna.org

Jane Austen Festival in Bath: www.janeausten.co.uk

Jane Austen's House Museum: www.jane-austens-house-museum.org.uk

Jane Austen Festival in Louisville, Kentucky: www.jasnalouisville.com

Old Mandeville Jane Austen Festival in Louisiana: www.janeaustenfestival.org

Jane Austen Festival in Pittsburgh: www.janeaustenpgh.org

Jane Fest in Fresno, California: www.jasnacenvalcal.com

Jane Austen Festival in Australia: www.janeaustenfestival.com.au

Step 4: Get obsessed.To get even closer, find out what Jane Austen really thought; read her correspondence. Discover what she really meant when she wrote the novels; read the criticism. Find out what other people are saying about their Jane Austens; lurk online and listen to discussion groups. Surf the Web, subscribe to blogs, friend her on Facebook. She's everywhere!

www.austenauthors.com (cooperative blog for Austen-inspired authors)

www.pemberley.com (good starting place, see the links page)

Austen-L Discussion Group/Archives at McGill University

Janeites Discussion Group/Yahoo

Step 5: Bear the inevitable disappointment. If some of Jane's letters seem mean-spirited, if the criticism contradicts beliefs you hold dear about your favorite novels as well as their author's intent, and if it appears that Other People's Jane Austens are completely unrelated to yours, it may be time to pull back. If you have begun to fear Your Jane Austen is laughing at you for wanting to be her best friend, you should probably give the relationship a break. Reconsider the Brontes. Or read something from a current best-seller list.

Step 6: Establish boundaries.Don't give up. Reconcile the person who traded secrets with you in Step 2 with the Irritable Supernova reconciled in Step 5 and remind yourself that Jane Austen is dead, therefore unknowable. What is knowable is the sparkling narrative, the wit and irony, and the joy that comes with every reading of The Six. Allow distance for the real Jane Austen, whoever she was, to rest in peace. The novels live forever.

Where did this story come from?

My Jane Austen Summer started when I read a review of Karen Joy Fowler's The Jane Austen Book Club in the New York Times Book Review years ago. The review inspired me to reread all six Austen novels, saving Fowler's book for dessert. But when I came to the end of the last Austen novel and realized Jane Austen was dead and would never write another word, I went into withdrawal. I tried to wean myself with Austen's novel fragments and juvenilia, read Austen's contemporaries, picked at the sequels and fan fiction, but nothing satisfied. I wandered the Internet and found many lost readers like myself, struggling with the void.

Thank goodness for Fowler's book. She led me to realize that I could bring Jane Austen back to life through my writing. I imagined the book I wanted to read: The Jane Austen Book Club , relocated to Howard's End , narrated by an American Bridget Jones. I envisioned Gothic elements and characters immersed in enactments and discussion so immediate it would seem Jane Austen were present. I found myself inventing a literary festival where Jane Austen's novels assume relevance in the life of a troubled young woman. Spending five years writing My Jane Austen Summer thoroughly satisfied my Austen craving.

Where did you get the idea for Lily's imaginary Jane Austen?

The first line of the prologue in The Jane Austen Book Club , "Each of us has a private Austen," as well as an essay where John Wiltshire, quoting Katherine Mansfield, suggests that readers imagine Jane Austen speaking to them between the lines of her text, intrigued me, especially since I was certain Jane Austen was my new best friend. I read biographies and criticism, getting to know her really well. But I was surprised when her human side was eventually revealed: irritable and prickly. And shocked by what seems to be a secret: her father's trusteeship of a slave-owning plantation. With the heated debate over the meaning of Mansfield Park and no one to define the truth for me, I had to wonder: Who is this person? Finally, the explanation that our heroine functions for us as a blank slate, upon which we can project our hopes and dreams, allowed me to understand the underlying dynamics of her relationship with fans, put it to rest, and simply enjoy reading her books.