S: Starting in August of 2020, Rose and I have read through the major works and the three prayers of Jane Austen, and it has been a wonderful experience! Rose had read most of them before, while I had yet to read any of Austen’s works. Honestly, timing is everything. I had tried years ago to read one, but was just unable to enjoy it or see the beauty and humour in it. She is now, without a doubt, one of my favourite authors. 

While we had planned on posting this in August 2025, we both had a lot of things come up and this went to the back burner. Thankfully, we’ve been able to get back to the FINAL post in this fun series!

If you’ve been on this journey with us, thank you! We hope that you were able to enjoy our thoughts, but most of all we hope that you were inspired to read Austen again or discover her writings for the first time.

R: It has been a journey! As Elizabeth says in Pride and Prejudice: ‘We will know where we have gone–we will recollect what we have seen.’ I’ve never really enjoyed analyzing literature, but we set out to simply have a conversation in blog form, and I think we hit the mark. We originally discussed doing this as a podcast, but realised that both of us prefer to share our thoughts in writing. It was also a lot more practical for working with our schedules. We were able to read at our own pace and put down our thoughts, then get on the phone to discuss each post before putting it out there. 

S: Doing it this way has been quite enjoyable, and I remember getting a lot of positive feedback from readers.

R: We tried watching the adaptations for a couple of the books virtually together, but technology was usually against us; so we had to watch them on our own, then put our thoughts together for the blog. One of my favourite memories of these last few years was visiting Stacy and watching four different Pride and Prejudice adaptations in one weekend! I was so glad we had the chance to get together for my favourite!

S: Yes! That is a very fond memory for me as well. It would have been fun to do it with some of the others!

Rose, which is your favourite Austen work, and which is your least favourite, if you have one? I think my favourite is Persuasion and Emma is probably my least favourite (if I can actually choose a least favourite!). 

R: Pride and Prejudice is definitely my favourite book! Emma is probably my least favourite as well. Northanger Abbey made a surprising jump to 3rd favourite for me this time around. I love the humour and silliness.

S: What about the movies? I have soft spots for the 1995 Sense and Sensibility, the 1995 Pride and Prejudice, and the 1995 Persuasion (apparently 1995 was a good year for me and Austen movies).

R: Same for me on P&P and S&S! I still have a lot of adaptations I need to watch for the others, so no favourites among those. I also enjoy the 1930’s P&P and the Amazon musical version as well. It surprised me that I could so thoroughly enjoy a modern adaptation.

S: Which book would you tell someone to start with if they are new to Austen’s works? I rather enjoyed reading them in publication order, so that would be what I would suggest.

R: I would say the same, in general. I might suggest Northanger Abbey as an opener, just because it’s shorter than the others, but it would depend on the person.

S: Is there anything you would want to change if we were to do this again? I think I’m pretty happy with the way we went through them.

R: I am as well! I enjoyed our discussions and was glad to spend more time with Jane Austen’s works, and learn more about her and her life. I recently finished a collection of her other writings, some of them from when she was a teenager and some of her unfinished works. Her history of England is hilarious!

S: Oh, I haven’t read her Juvenelia, but I did read Lady Susan, The Watsons, and Sanditon and enjoyed those.

Should we go through another classic author’s works? Until then, Rose continues to blog here at All the Writings, while Stacy continues to blog at Bookshelves and Tea.