A bee in her (frilly) bonnet

Speaking of great women, I hear that a certain feisty publisher has got a bee in her frilly bonnet about one aspect of the otherwise extremely genteel Jane Austen Society of Australia (or JASA). She wrote to the society recently: ‘I am contacting you to express my extreme disappointment in one aspect of the JASA website and that is the linking of the website to the US online bookseller, Amazon.com. In Australia, we boast many of the best booksellers in the English-speaking world. Their knowledge of books, their enthusiasm and passion for books is one of the greatest un-sung assets to our cultural life. The greatest threat to their livelihoods is for their customers to go off-shore to purchase their books. As a cultural organisation that benefits from a literate, book-reading population I feel JASA should be doing all it can to encourage JASA members to support their local bookshop.’ And on that note, Dear Readers, I bid you all adieu until next month!