Jane Austen

Title: "Presumption"Author: Julia BarrettPublisher: M. Evans & Co.Length, price: 238 pages, $30Title: "Pemberley"Author: Emma TennantPublisher: St. Martin's PressLength, price: 184 pages, $18.95 "I am a Jane Austenite," E. M. Forster wrote in 1924, "and therefore slightly imbecile about Jane Austen. . . . I read and re-read, the mouth open and the mind closed. Shut up in measureless content, I greet her by the name of most kind hostess, while criticism slumbers."Whether or not the 2,700 members of the Jane Austen Society of North America are amused by Forster's idolatry, they cannot ignore two recent incursions onto sacred ground: Julia Barrett and Emma Tennant have both had the temerity to continue where "Pride and Prejudice" left off.By calling "Presumption" an "entertainment," Julia Braun Kessler and Gabrielle Donnelly (writing under the pseudonym Julia Barrett)

In the autumn of 1791, a very precocious Jane Austen amused herself and her family by creating lively and allusive parodies of the literary and stylistic conventions of contemporary writing. Using fiction, Shakespeare's tragedies, Sheridan's comedies, historical romances and her family's comments as the supporting "evidence" for her outrageous assertions, she re-visioned history as a catalog of crimes against her favorite heroines: Anna Bullen, Lady Jane Grey and Mary, Queen of Scots.The irreverent, hilarious "History" was obviously intended for pure amusement.

Dundalk man, 59, is charged on child pornography counts A Dundalk man was arrested yesterday and charged with 10 counts of possessing child pornography, state police and the FBI said. Authorities said Julius G. Ruley Jr., 59, of the 1600 block of Searles Road accessed a Web site that was offering pornographic images of minors. The site was started in 2006 by FBI agents in California and didn't contain pornography. Investigators said they traced one of the site's users to Ruley's Internet account.

Pride and Promiscuity: The Lost Sex Scenes of Jane Austen, by Arielle Eckstut and Dennis Ashton (Fireside Books, 146 pages, $12). For any addict of the novels of Jane Austin -- and even for those with faint but indelible memories from undergraduate days -- this thoroughly respectful spoof should be a delight. Filling the gap in Jane Bonnet's mysterious illness in Pride and Prejudice is a bedroom scene that's as decorous as it is lubricious -- and ridiculous and charming. An elegant episode added to Mansfield Park extends the theme of incest well beyond Fanny and Edmund.

Gingerbread pancakes round out the holidayThere's nothing like the fragrance of gingerbread to conjure up holiday memories. A new way to savor that aroma is with a batch of gingerbread pancakes from Angelic Gourmet's mix. The product, from Baltimore-based Angel Kisses, Inc., costs $4 to $5 for a 16-ounce box and is available at Safeway, ValuFood, Cross Street Cheese and various specialty shops. Or call Angel Kisses at (410) 244-6404.Say it's late at night and you're surfing up a storm on the 'Net.

TOMORROW FORMER HOSTAGE TO SPEAK -- Former hostage Terry Waite will deliver the keynote address for Loyola College's humanities symposium at 7 p.m. at McGuire Hall, 4501 N. Charles St. Waite was held hostage in Lebanon from 1987 to 1991. The symposium's theme is "What Would You Die For?" Admission is free. 410-617-2617. WEDNESDAY ABOUT JANE AUSTEN -- A lecture on the works of Jane Austen will be given by Rachel Brownstein, Goucher College's Jane Austen scholar-in-residence, at 7 p.m. at the college's Merrick Lecture Hall, 1021 Dulaney Valley Road, Towson.

SWEET NATURE Enjoy the mouth-watering taste of fresh maple syrup? Taste this sweet treat and learn how it's made this weekend at Oregon Ridge Nature Center. Watch the transition from sap to syrup as the maple trees are tapped for sap that is then boiled down into syrup. Visitors can also make maple taffy or watch a video about the maple sugaring process. ....................... Oregon Ridge Nature Center, 13555 Beaver Dam Road, Cockeysville, hosts this event from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.

Oysterback, Maryland.--Chelsea Redmond is 13 and in eighth grade this year. Every night after dinner she bikes down to the harbor and baits up her father's trot lines. For this, Junior pays her, and she's saving up the money.Chelsea is the frugal one of the Redmond kids; she lends her brother Jason money at usurious rates of interest. Jason used to bait the lines, but now that he can drive, he's got a part-time job over to the Burger Clown in town. The one thing Jason knows is that he doesn't want to be a waterman like his father.

BOSTON -- Forgive me if I sound a bit odd this morning. I'm suffering from what might be called Masterpiece Theater Syndrome, though this masterpiece was on the large screen.The syndrome -- identified by the number of times one refers to oneself as one -- was brought on by watching ''Sense and Sensibility,'' the latest travelogue through the 19th-century landscape and mindscape of Jane Austen.Miss Austen is everywhere these days. Her ''Emma'' was recently morphed into ''Clueless.'' Her ''Persuasion'' continues to make its lush appearance in cinema art houses.

WHAT JANE AUSTEN ATEAND DICKENS KNEW: FROMFOX HUNTING TO WHIST --THE FACTS OF DAILY LIFE INNINETEENTH-CENTURYENGLANDDaniel PoolSimon & Schuster416 pages. $25To truly understand the 19th-century English novel, you don't need semiotics, deconstructionism or even any critical approach. What you need is a working knowledge of pounds and pence, the class system, dowries, primogeniture, church politics, weddings and wills. If this sounds like a Lewis Caroll nonsense list, it should. The 19th-century novel, more than any other genre in any other period, is an omnium gatherum of life as it was lived by its readers.