Sought Them Abroad

The fictional blog, "Seeking Them Abroad," has been completed. Or at least, it's as completed as a blog can ever be. Will Susan choose to update again at some point in the future? I don't know. Did she learn any lessons? Perhaps not. But I hope that you will enjoy reading it, if you haven't already, and that it might inspire a desire to read the inspiration, Northanger Abbey.

Or really, to read any Jane Austen you can. I've gone from being an interested reader to something of a devoted Janeite myself in the course of this project. May others be converted as well.

I'll update to this site with any updates about the Chappell-Lougee or the project itself. I watch the site pretty closely, so if you have any comments or suggestions on any of the blogs, or you just want to tell me how incredibly awesome you think Austen is, please leave them here. You can also leave them on the other blogs, although if you choose to comment on the fictional blog, please help it stay "in character" and write to Susan rather than me. And without mentioning that the blog is fiction.

Thanks for reading!

Oh yes, here it is, what you've been waiting for

I have started the fictional blog, the third and final part of this project. If you'd like to read about the adventures of young Susan Johnstone (*cough* Catherine Morland *cough), you may do so here.

The academic blog has been finished

The last two summaries, for Emma and Persuasion, are up, so the academic blog is finished. I will start work on the fictional blog early in August.

The academic blog is well on its way

I'm just updating to say that the academic blog is in progress. I've written and uploaded summaries and papers for The Romance of the Forest, Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, and Pride and Prejudice. More on Mansfield Park, Emma, and Persuasion will follow.

And this summer, I will be working on the third part of the project, the fictional blog. So keep an eye out for that.

This is shamelessly copied from one of the other blogs.

This blog is a part of my Chappell-Lougee project, through Stanford University. I am studying Austen and the culture of Janeites, and particularly the ways in which the cult of an author affects the public's experience of that author's books. This is the main page for the project, directing you to other pages. My project consists of three parts:

1) Touring through Austen Territory. If you're not aware, there is a pretty significant Austen tourist industry in England. Some people actually make money off of this, leading others on tours around the significant geographical highlights of Austen territory. Others make the pilgrimage on their own. I chose the second option. At the beginning of May 2005, I spent about nine days in Bath, where Austen lived for several years and where two of her books, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, take place. I visited the houses where Austen lived, saw the specific places mentioned in her books, dined at the Pump-Room, and took a look at the Jane Austen Centre. I moved from Bath to Chawton, where Austen spent the latter part of her life. Her brother inherited the manor there (now a significant library of women's fiction) and gave Austen and her sister and mother a cottage on the land. I also visited Winchester, where Austen died and is buried. The pictures are a pretty significant part of this blog. I'm doing this largely to experience the culture of the Janeites.

2) Austen and Academia. I am currently studying abroad at the Stanford Centre in Oxford, where I am taking a tutorial on Austen. I'm starting with Ann Radcliffe's The Romance of the Forest and then progressing through all six of Austen's major novels in chronological order. I will be writing a paper on a topic of my choice for each book. Originally I thought I might write a more general survey of what I've been reading. Instead, I'll just write a short summary of each book, with my thoughts, and post to the paper. The point of this part of the project is to get a better grasp of Austen as a writer for myself. Whereas the travel blog was a way of distancing myself from the books, this brings me in closer again. I'll be working on this blog for the next month and a half.

3) The last blog, of an unforeseen title as of yet. I will link to it from my other blogs, but will have no links to the other blogs from it. This blog will be fiction. It will be a modern reinterpretation of Northanger Abbey, Austen's first novel. It will be written from the perspective of a teenage Janeite, probably American, probably much like myself, and definitely bearing some likeness to Catherine Morland. It will be terrible. Possibly. I'll be writing that this summer.

I had grand delusions of making a gorgeous website for my project originally, but then I realized two things. First, I have no skills to use to make a gorgeous website. Second, the blog is a democratic medium. Although I admire beautiful blogs greatly, this sort of roughly-hewn, jumbled, quadruple-blog effort is realism. We are the pioneers of blogging! (Despite the figure I heard on the radio the other day, of five milllion blogs currently operating on the internet.) Our blogs are the log cabins of the internet!

Or so my Catherine Morland would say.