So here is another week’s worth of tidbits on Jane….[and this is only a smattering!]
- An article by Gary Dexter in The Telegraph U.K. tells how the title Pride & Prejudice originated in Fanny Burney’s Cecelia.
- On the JASNA site, a real treat is Diana Birchall’s In Defense of Mrs. Elton , now online and as originally published by the 1999 AGM with Janet McMaster’s illustrations, with a new introduction dated August 2008 by the author.
- Be sure to visit Laurel Ann’s Austenprose for her Mansfield Park Madness events over the next two weeks (starts August 15)…there will be contests and free book giveaways, and there is always the hope that you might change your view about Fanny…
- There’s an indie pop group called Pemberley, but Austen is nowhere in sight…
- Ms. Place pens a delicious post on Hot Chocolate, 18 – 19th Century Style on her Jane Austen’s World Blog
- Dame Boudicca names Elizabeth Bennet the “Pop Culture Woman of the Week”
- At Fashion-era.com, see the article on the Regency Gentlewoman of Jane Austen’s time.
- And on another fashion note, here is blog devoted solely to BUTTONS: see the postings on the types of buttons and the history of the button at Petronella Luiting’s Buttons & Fabrics Blog.
- If you cannot visit the Geffrye Museum in London, trek over to its website where you can view the museum collection “Life in the Living Room from 1600-2000” It shows the changing style of the English domestic interior in a series of period rooms from 1600 to the present day. There are also several virtual tours… great fun…
- And Jane makes another list…this time as one of the Top Ten Literary Virgins at John Sutherland’s book blog at the Guardian.uk.
- Author Kate Atkinson (her Behind the Scenes at the Museum is one of my favorite books) reveals in an interview in the Times-Online that her next book will be about Jane Austen and will be titled “What Would Jane Do?”…can’t wait!
- At Paper Menagerie, the Jane Austen Notebooks are available again…. check them out…
The August newsletter from the Jane Austen Centre in Bath has two articles on hunting during the Regency Period: Sport Hunting in Regency England, and In the Pink: Dressing for the Fox Hunt.
- and the Burnley & Trowbridge Co. of Williamsburg, VA is offering three fall workshops in 18th century fashion: The Lady’s Stay (Sept 6-7); An 18th century Gown of the Last Quarter (Nov 14-16); and Ladies’ Riding Habits (Jan. 31- Feb 1, 2009)
Jane Austen in Vermont 
I, too, would like to give a big thumbs up for Atkinson’s BEHIND THE SCENES; a wonderful book. She is a consistently interesting writer; I’ve read several, including CASE HISTORIES (2004).
And I wish we could all travel down to Williamsburg; the workshops sound quite inventive and interesting.
For an upcoming article, I have been studying a letter Maria Smith wrote her sister Charlotte Currie about her trip (with Ed and Emma Austen; Mrs Augusta Smith; two other Smith sisters; and Ed’s sister Caroline Austen) through Derbyshire in September 1833: one thing she mentions is SEEING button shanks made while in Birmingham. From diaries and letters of this family, it is quite evident that manufactories and ‘wonders’ of the modern world (like the under-construction Thames Tunnel) were TOURIST attractions! Maria says they viewed the processes for the plating of knives, the making of button shanks, and the stamping of crests on livery buttons – so, wonderful to see a site dedicated to the little-discussed BUTTON! Where would we be without the button…
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