Vermont inn planning Jane Austen weekends

HYDE PARK, Vt., June 17 (UPI) -- The proprietors of an eight-room bed and breakfast in a Georgian-style mansion in Vermont say they are planning a series of Jane Austen-themed weekends.

Four weekends are scheduled at the Governor's House in Hyde Park between August and next January.

Each will concentrate on Austen's novel "Persuasion" with talks, book discussion, a comparison of the novel to the movies, afternoon tea and carriage rides. The topic for the following year is "Pride and Prejudice."

"I'm hoping each weekend will be a mix of young people who might know only the movies and are ready to discover the original prose and readers who consider Jane an old friend and can't wait to argue the merits of the new interpretations over breakfast," Suzanne Boden, who runs the inn, said in a statement.

Although the interior of the 1893 mansion is the typical late Victorian style of the period, its Georgian exterior is a copy of the Longfellow House in Cambridge, Mass., a style that was popular during the Regency period when Jane Austen wrote her beloved novels, Boden said.