Dear Author: Romance Book Reviews, Author Interviews, and Commentary

A while back we received an unusual request at Dear Author. We were asked to review something other than a book — a DVD set called “The Romance Collection: Special Edition.” The 14 DVD set, which can be found here, usually retails for $99.95 but is currently on sale for $59.97, and contains nearly 30 hours of programming (not including the special features) from A&E’s romantic films and miniseries.

The eight titles included in “The Romance Collection: Special Edition” are as follows: “Pride and Prejudice” starring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle, “Victoria and Albert,” starring Nigel Hawthorne, Jonathan Pryce and Sir Peter Ustinov, “Emma,” starring Kate Beckinsale, “Jane Eyre,” starring Samantha Morton and Ciaran Hinds, “Lorna Doone,” starring Martin Clunes, Richard Coyle, Aidan Gillen and Amelia Warner, “The Scarlet Pimpernel,” starring Richard E. Grant and Elizabeth McGovern, “Tom Jones,” starring Max Beesley, Samantha Morton and Benjamin Whitrow, and “Ivanhoe,” starring Steven Waddington and Ciaran Hinds.

This review is, obviously, for Jane Eyre starring Samantha Morton and Ciaran Hinds. It’s an A&E Home Video Production originally shown in 1997 and released on DVD in 1999.

Directors: Robert Young (III)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC
Language: English
Subtitles: English …

There was that story running around the interwebs a while back that some guy had mashed up a bunch of Jane Austen stories and submitted them to publishing houses and agents to see if Jane Austen could still get published today. The big story was that the publishing folks were rejecting it because Jane Austen is just not saleable in today’s market. (I’d give links but I’m on dialup and it is just too painful to do the internet crawl on dialup).

Other folks suggested that maybe these editors and agents were rejecting it because they recognized that it was plagiarism or, at least, too close to the original.

Perhaps that is what Dreamspinner Press should have done with Lucia Logan’s book, A Hidden Passion. Of course, not they nor did any of the Eppie judges notice that A Hidden Passion was so close in form and language to Jane Eyre. The post which reveals the startling similarities is at Speak Its Name and is dated September 25, 2007.

On October 5, 2007, Erastes published an email from Dreamspinner Press that the book had been withdrawn from the catalog with the author’s …