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Chrise, you type faster than me - and more succinctly too!

You gave more detail, malone!

I'm baffled by it really; how can you improve on Jane Austen, who wrote the best English prose ever published.

There was a character called Jerry Cornelius, who a disparate but friendly group of SF writes all wrote about - Michael Moorcock probably the best known of them.

......though I did read a very entertaining version of Mansfield Park (not part of the "Austen Project" I think), in which Fanny Price was the rich relative.

This may sound heretical, but I have never read any of Jane Austen's work - it/she doesn't appeal to me at all! I much prefer contemporary fiction.

hi all
yes there is Austen project and Joanna Trollope is another of the authors,I am not quite sure how the get away with it but feel they should leave well alone as some of their own work arent brilliant. No 2 cat has just tried to bring yet another wood pigeon through the catflap,very much alive the dogs were very keen to help but I managed to get it and apart from ruffled feathers it was OK,they are so fat they have difficulty in getting airborne,hopefully peace will reign for the rest of the evening

Really malone, do give her a go. I was put off 19th century fiction by Dickens and the Brontes, so she was a breath of fresh air.

Pride and prejudice, obviously, but Emma is probably the most amusing.

Personally, I cannot see the sense of the Austen project ?
It is only a rewrite of the basics of the story - but what of the essence of the "Englishness" as written by Jane Austen herself? and the elegance of her prose?
This cannot be reproduced by an "upmarket" version? And surely defeats the whole object of arousing interest in her works?

Thanks for the encouragement and recommendations, Chrise, but I think I'll still stick with my more modern/recent choices. I also think I was put off Austen by all the BBC adaptations - the glimpses I had were more than enough!

I suspect that I can't convince you, malone, but really, she wrote English as she should be spoke,

Jane Austin: (Goldfish to owner ) "Do you not think, madam, that the time has come when you should kindly replenish my current environment ?"

Modern version:
"Don't you think you oughtta
quickly change my dirty water "