Free Jane Austen eBooks in Honor of her Birthday on Thursday, Dec 16th

Update for those who had trouble getting free ebooks this morning! Sourcebooks apologizes for the mixup and inconvenience, and is extending the offer of free illustrated Jane Austen ebooks through Friday, December 17th! Click on this link to order the sequel ebooks. Unfortunately, the Jane Austen illustrated come with a charge of .99 each.


Thursday, December 16th is Jane Austen’s 235th birthday!

Sourcebooks, the world’s leading publisher of Jane Austen fiction, is offering a unique deal to readers who want to celebrate Jane by reading special editions of all six of Austen’s beloved novels in a 21st century format.

The free books come with Brock illustrations

Special e-book editions of Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Sense and Sensibility, Northanger Abbey, Persuasion and Mansfield Park will be available for free for one day only. These celebratory editions include the full novels, plus the legendary color illustrations of the Brock brothers, originally created to accompany the books in 1898.

In addition to the Jane Austen classics, readers can also enjoy ten bestselling Austen-inspired novels for free on December 16th in honor of her birthday, including, Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife by Linda Berdoll, Mr. Darcy’s Diary by Amanda Grange and Mr. & Mrs. Fitzwilliam Darcy: Two Shall Become One by Sharon Lathan.

This is what blogger Tara Fly had to say about ordering the book:

I downloaded my copies for free this morning from http://BarnesandNoble.com and wasn’t charged any fees. :)

I followed the link provided by Laurel Ann on AustenProse in this blog post:

http://austenprose.com/2010/12/14/download-free-jane-austen-inspired-ebooks-on-her-birthday-december-16-2010/

B&N takes you through their standard check-out process, asking you to sign-in or register for an account (which includes providing a CC# and shipping address) … I already had an account with them, so I was asked to verify my information.

But when you reach the end of the “transaction”, the items on your bill are free.

I didn’t have an eReader for my PC, but B&N has free eReader downloads as well.

I’m so excited about this offer; it was really sweet of them. Cheers!

- Tara

Georgette Heyer's Regency World by Jennifer Kloester: A Sneak Peek

Sourcebooks is reissuing Georgette Heyer's Regency World by Jennifer Kloester, which will come out tomorrow on August 1. If you click on this link on Scribd you can read the first chapter of this fascinating and very informative book! Here's a very short excerpt:

"The middle class was growing fast in Regency England as increasing numbers of financiers, merchants and industrialists were added to the wealthy doctors, lawyers, engineers, higher clergy and farmers who, among others, comprised the upper ranks of the class. To be in the middle ranks of society usually meant ownership of some kind of property—land, livestock or tools—and the ability to earn a regular and reliable income. The number of servants employed in a house and the type of carriage(s) and number of horses one owned were also useful class indicators, although some among the new middle class, such as the affluent merchant Jonathan Chawleigh in A Civil Contract, tended to mistake opulence for elegance and an excess of food or finery as a sign of wealth and status. But the middle class was a very large and diverse group and it also included shopkeepers, teachers, builders, the lesser clergy, members of the government administration, clerks, innkeepers and even some of the servant class. Property was really the main factor that separated the lowest level of the middle class from the better- off among the labouring poor."

Publisher: Sourcebooks, Incorporated
Format: Paperback, 400pp
ISBN-13: 9781402241369
ISBN: 1402241364