So it continues…the question if Jane Austen really invented baseball [ see my previous post here as well as Janeite Kelly’s comment that indeed the OED cites Austen in Northanger Abbey as first using the term “baseball” in literature.] So all this banter can only take the usual cultural turn of appearing on Comedy Central where all things are given their just due. Thanks to David at Random Curiosity for this link to Stephen Colbert on Jane Austen Baseball.
I may be late to the table, but just discovered this morning a new Regency site: Nancy Mayer ~ Regency Researcher. Nancy is gradually putting all her many-years worth of Regency and Jane Austen expertise onto her website, and we will be the grateful benefactors of her knowledge. There is an excellent bibliography, a series of links, and the option to ask her any question you might have on the period.
And remember to check back often as she continues to add information.
Thank you Nancy, for this lovely new addition to the online Regency world! [and a thank you to Susanna Ives for hosting Nancy on her website: Susanna Ives ~ Regency Romance Writer!]
This is the time of year for the many Austen Birthday Teas and events, so here is a round-up of happenings in a wide-sweep of the Northeast, starting with our very own Vermont.
JASNA ~ Vermont:
Annual Birthday Tea with the Burlington Country Dancers
Sunday, December 7, 2008 2-5 pm
Champlain College Burlington VT, Hauke Center
click here for the full post for information and to RSVP
The Governor’s House in Hyde Park, Vermont is offering several “Persuasion” related Jane Austen Weekends. Please click here for all the information. You can sign up for the whole weekend or just take part in one or more of the activities:
Informal Talk with Coffee and Dessert, Friday, 8:00 p.m.,
Afternoon Tea, Saturday, 3:00 p.m.
Book Discussion and Dinner, Saturday, 7:00 p.m.
Jane Austen Quiz and Sunday Brunch, Sunday, 11:30 a.m.
Friday, November 21, 2008 7:30pm to 9:30pm
Music by Lar Duggan (piano) & Dominique Gagne (flute) of Impropriety
Teaching by Wendy Gilchrist, Martha Kent, Val Medve
Elley-Long Music Center
223 Ethan Allen Ave., Colchester, VT
(in Fort Ethan Allen complex, off Route 15)
$8 ($5 student)
Friday, December 5, 2008
DIFFERENT TIME: 8pm to 10pm
Music by Impropriety
(Lar Duggan on piano, Dominique Gagne on flute, Laura Markowitz on violin, Ana Ruesink on viola)
Teaching by Val Medve DIFFERENT LOCATION: Vermont International Festival
Champlain Valley Expo (Fairgrounds)
Route 15, Essex Junction, VT Enjoy supper (extra charge), concerts, and great shopping at the festival from 5pm to 8pm.
Combo ticket is $12 ($9 student) & includes all-weekend festival pass PLUS this Friday night dance.
Combo ticket is $5 for our dance series subscribers & includes all-weekend festival pass PLUS this Friday night dance.
Otherwise, dance only is $8 ($5 student) and all-weekend festival pass is $6 — available at door.
Combo ticket is available in advance (at our Nov. 7 & 21 dances or from Val Medve) OR at door.
Friday, December 19, 2008 7:30pm to 9:30pm
Music by Impropriety
(Lar Duggan on piano, Dominique Gagne on flute, Laura Markowitz on violin, Ana Ruesink on viola)
Teaching by Wendy Gilchrist, Martha Kent, Val Medve
Elley-Long Music Center
223 Ethan Allen Ave., Colchester, VT
(in Fort Ethan Allen complex, off Route 15)
$8 ($5 student)
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JASNA ~ Massachusetts:
Sunday, Nov. 16th, 2 p.m. Marcia Folsom
Wheelock College, Brookline Campus, 43 Hawes St.
Topic: The Privilege of My Profession
Sunday, Dec. 14th, 2 p.m.Jane Austen’s Birthday Celebration
With TheNewton Country Players Wheelock College, Brookline Campus, 43 Hawes Street.
JASNA ~ Montreal-Quebec:
November 17: regular meeting [Report on the Chicago AGM; discussion of Kipling’s short story “The Janeites”]
December 16 (Tuesday): Annual Birthday Tea
Contact: Elaine Bander ( ebander [at] dawson college [dot] qc [dot] ca )
A Frivolous Distinction, Dress in the Regency Period
BIRTHDAY MEETING – SUNDAY, DECEMBER 14 at 2:00 p.m. General Society Library, 20 West 44th Street (between Fifth & Sixth)
The well known designer and fashion historian, Daniel Cole will present an illustrated talk on Regency clothing explaining many of the intriguing mysteries of both women’s and men’s clothing. What, for example, are half-boots? Were women’s dresses actually wetted down to make them cling? Why were knee britches for formal attire and pantaloons for daytime? These and many other fascinating facts about clothing in Jane Austen’s time will be explored.
Join Carolyn Epstein (member of JASNA) for a discussion of how the characters in Jane Austen’s books amused themselves during their social gatherings, the importance of music, word games, and cards, and “an Emma Christmas Eve”
Price: Free, registration required
Phone: (201) 529-7323
Age Suitability: All Ages
Carolyn Epstein teaches at St. Thomas Aquinas College in the English/Writing Department. She is a member of the Jane Austen Society of North America.
Registration necessary beginning November 10th Event Website
Winter Program to celebrate the 233rd anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth by making merry with fellow Janeites, good company and good cooks. What devilish and challenging game awaits us this year? Please join us to delight in each other’s company as we cavort merrily and behave in ways “most profligate and shocking.”
Location: Ellerslie at Crosslands, Kennett Square, PA 19348
Date: Sunday, December 7, 2008
Time: 1:30 PM to 4:00 PM
Directions: Follow Route 1, north or south depending upon one’s starting point, to Route 52 north. Turn onto Route 52 north, then follow Route 52 north, until turning onto Route 926 east. OR follow Route 3, east or west depending on one’s starting point, then turn onto Rout 926 west. Turn into Crosslands parking lot from Route 926.
Please bring a sweet or savory to share. Coffee and tea will be provided. Another Birthday Basket will be offered. Take a chance!
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If there are more events out there in the east, please email me to let me know ~ and Kelly and I send wishes for all to have grand celebrations!
The season is upon us! ~ I append a few thoughts for Austen-related gifts for the upcoming gift-giving holidays, and what better than to shower your friends and family with all things Austen!
I have chosen sample items from various sources ~ follow the links for prices and ordering information; you will also find other products for sale. Have fun!
To begin, see the JASNA website for Austen-themed gifts for the holidays available from several chapters [remember that your purchase supports the chapter] ~ here are a few of the many items:
At the Metropolitan New York Chapter, you can purchase Gene Gill’s new book:
Jest for Janeites, by Gene C. Gill
This gently priced collection of hilarious cartoons by JASNA-NY’s Gene Gill sends up the sequels, the prequels, the films, and even ourselves. Grab copies of this book for yourself and as a stocking stuffer for friends! [$11.00 each (includes shipping costs)]
After you have perused all the JASNA Chapter offerings, you can meander to these sites … there is a feast out there!
If you have any friends who do NOT have this, now is the time to give them the Jane Austen action figure ~ at Amazon.com: there is a full shop here of Austen-related products, but as always, I advise you to shop at your local bookshop first!
There are several Austen images at CartoonStock.comand theCartoon Bank at The New Yorker [at the former you can purchase an image to put on any number of items: tee-shirts, mugs.] I am not attaching any images as a license was required, but please visit the sites to see some of their very funny cartoons, including a wet-shirted Darcy!
“Gwyneth Paltrow, Emma Thompson, Keira Knightley—why are all your heroines so glamorous?”
[this is one of Gene Gill’s cartoons, and Ted Adams of San Francisco won the caption contest at the Chicago AGM ~ see above for a copy of Gill’s book, Jest for Janeites.]
An Advent calendar of Westminster Abbey from Bas Bleu
Jane Austen Notable card at Shakespeare’s Den, where there are other Austen gifts (including the action figure noted above), and a feast of Shakespeare gifts… such as:
Books will be given a post of their own, but for movies visit the PBS Shop for the many BBC productions of Austen’s works … like this latest Sense & Sensibility (where ITV at least gave it enough time to be meaningful!…and really, who can resist David Morrissey as Colonel Brandon?!)
And while you are watching your movie, a glass of wine is in order ~ corked with your new Jane Austen Novelstops wine stopper from Bas Bleu!
“I will drink the wine myself”
and finally, I ked [sic] you not ~ the Jane Austen Rose Sneaker by Keds at Zazzle.com[lots of other products!]
[please note: these are on MY Holiday wish-list, in case anyone is in need of an idea!….]
Happy Shopping!
Cheerio, Deb [who hates to shop, but one can never have enough Austen! ~ stay tuned for some book thoughts ~]
With women predominating JASNA-Vermont’s chapter, one question that continually arises is: What do MEN have to say about Jane Austen’s novels?? In the end, according to TWO GUYS READ JANE AUSTEN, the answer is multi-faceted and not always gender-specific.
TWO GUYS READ JANE AUSTEN is a delight, guaranteed to make the reader chuckle – and read certain sections out loud to anyone who will listen. Being quickly published proves a boon, as timely topics like Anne Hathaway and Becoming Jane are subjects of the first letters:
“…I was hoping you and Kathy could weigh in with an opinion. We just saw Anne in the film Becoming Jane ….Miranda didn’t much like her, but then, in my experience, Anne Hathaway is a bit of a litmus test. If you like her, you’re a man; if you don’t you’re a woman.”
The epistolary style of the book (email versus letters) recalls 84, Charing Cross Road, although the poignancy of that novel is missing. While readers will learn a bit about the lives of authors Steve Chandler and Terry Hill, it is for their quips and deeper thoughts on Jane Austen and Pride and Prejudice that will have you pulling this off the shelf for a re-read every once in a while. TWO GUYS READING JANE AUSTEN would be useful to many book groups; it would engender discussion on (especially) Pride and Prejudice. Continue reading “Two Guys Read Jane Austen (a review)”→
Jane Odiwe tells of her new book: a sequel to S&S, Mr. Willoughby Returns: (see her blog for more info)
When Marianne Dashwood weds Colonel Brandon both are aware of the other’s past attachments; Marianne’s grand passion for the charming but ruthless John Willoughby and Brandon’s tragic amour for his lost love Eliza. Three years on Marianne is living with her husband and child at Delaford Park, deeply in love and contented for the most part, although Marianne’s passionate, impulsive and sometimes jealous behaviour is an impediment to her true happiness. News that John Willoughby and his wife have returned to the West Country brings back painful memories for Marianne and with the demise of Mrs Smith of Allenham Court comes the possibility of Mr Willoughby and his wife returning to live near Barton and the surrounding area of Devon and Dorset, a circumstance which triggers a set of increasingly challenging, yet often amusing perplexities for Marianne and the families who live round about.
Alert Janeite Nancy M. has posted about The Lost Years of Jane Austen, by Barbara Ker Wilson [Ulysses Press, Nov. 2008]
“Thanks to her meticulous diaries and frequent letters, Jane Austen’s life is well documented. Except for a mysterious period in her early 20s , when, for unknown reasons, her sister Cassandra burned all of Jane’s personal writings.”
A fantasy of what could have happened in the lost years.
Australia and Wentworth are mentioned [but as Laurel Ann proposes, is the a book written in 1984 titled Jane in Australia ?]
Peter Ackroyd, author of many a British literary tome – novels and all manner of non-fiction, has a new book, The Thames: A Biography [Nan Talese, 2008] to follow his London: A Biography of 2000. Published last year in the U.K. under the title Thames: Sacred River, and now available in the US, this is a must for my London collection! Here is a review from Publisher’s Weekly:
For a river with such a famous history, England’s Thames measures only 215 miles. Acclaimed novelist and biographer Ackroyd (Hawksmoor; Shakespeare) invites readers on an eclectic, sprawling and delightful cruise of this important waterway. The Thames has been a highway, a frontier and an attack route; it has been a playground and a sewer, a source of water and a source of power, writes Ackroyd. Historians believe the river may have been important for transport and commerce as early as the Neolithic Age. The ancient Egyptian goddess Isis has a long association with the Thames, which was used for baptisms, both pagan and Christian, during the Roman Empire. The British tribes tried to use the Thames as a defense against Julius Caesar’s invasion, and the Normans built the Tower of London and Windsor Castle on the Thames as symbols of military preeminence. The royal waterway carried Anne Boleyn to both her coronation and her beheading, and famously served as inspiration for paintings by Turner and Monet and for Handel’s Water Music, commissioned to associate the German-born George I with a potent source of English power. Elegant and erudite, Ackroyd’s gathering of rich treats does the famed tributary proud. Illus., maps. (Nov. 4) See this LA Times review
The Lady’s Stratagem: A Repository of 1820s Directions for the Toilet, Mantua-Making, Stay-Making, Millinery & Etiquette
Edited, translated, and with additional material by Frances Grimble
Publication date: November 3, 2008
755 pages; 98 line drawings, 36 halftones
Glossary, bibliography, and index
ISBN: 978-0-9636517-7-8
Cover price: $75.00
Lavolta Press
20 Meadowbrook Drive
San Francisco, California 94132
415/566-6259 www.lavoltapress.com
The Books Please blog reviews Georgette Heyer’s Friday’s Child. [Margeret has created a very thoughtful reading blog and is one you should visit often…] for this, her first Heyer read, she links to the Georgette Heyer Reading Challenge Blog. I confess to just starting MY first Heyer, Faro’s Daughter, and will post a review soon.
And finally a visit to Austenprose for her November booklist… [some duplicates I fear, but we are always looking for the same thing!]
For those of you interested in textiles, visit R. John Howe’s blog on Textiles and Text where he reports on the recent textile symposium in Washington DC… many lovely photographs to view!
And for those of you who are hungry, Regency Reader Blogwrites about the typical Regency breakfast; and while you are there, look at the other recent posts on Bath, Tattersall’s, and various historical Regency novels that have been reviewed.
And finally for a bit of end-of- the-week humor (or maybe not…), take a quick look at the results of the Guardian.co.uk contest on redesigning covers of literary classics for a “dumbed-down” age. Dickens had the most entries it seems, but as you can see, Jane made the list!
This cannot wait for the weekly round-up! See this article in today’s CNN.com edition :
According to author Julian Norridge baseball originated in Britain, and part of his proof comes from a reference in Jane Austen’s novel “Northanger Abbey.”
Norridge, whose book “Can we Have our Balls Back, Please?” focuses on Britain’s role in writing the rulebooks for a long list of sports, says Austen mentioned baseball in the opening pages of “Northanger Abbey,” which was written in 1797-98.
Norridge says that Austen referenced the sport while introducing her tomboy heroine Catherine Morland, writing: “It was not very wonderful that Catherine, who had nothing heroic about her, should prefer cricket, baseball, riding on horseback, and running about the country at the age of 14, to books.”
He argues in his book that the reference indicates British people were familiar with the sport prior to its supposed invention much later in the United States.
Can I have read this book so many times without that word jumping off the page?? Baseball is spelled “base ball” in my text …. but as a die-hard Yankees fan [OMG, what an admission!], I should have certainly at least noticed this! …. so I put this out to you, Kind Readers, and ask for your thoughts … and has anyone written about this before??
Before you go to the polls today to VOTE, head over to theJane Austen Addict website of author Laurie Viera Rigler for a look at 3 videos on Jane for President!
[and a thank you to Ms. Place at JA’s World for the heads-up!]
Jane Austen loved a garden. She took a keen interest in flower gardening and kitchen gardening alike. The Austens grew their own food whenever they could and had flower gardens wherever they lived, at their parsonage at Steventon in Hampshire, their town gardens at Bath and Southampton, and when they returned to Hampshire, at their cottage garden at Chawton. In Jane’s letters to her sister Cassandra, we see her planning the details of these family gardens, discussing the planting of fruit, flowers, and trees with enthusiasm. In the course of her life, she also had the opportunity to visit many of the grander gardens of England: her brother’s two estates at Chawton and Godmersham, the manor houses of friends and family, and probably even the great estate at Chatsworth, assumed by many to be the inspiration for Pemberley…
So begins the new book “In the Garden with Jane Austen,” by Kim Wilson, author of Tea with Jane Austen, published by Jones Books [2008], one of my purchases at the AGM Emporium in Chicago, and for those of you enamored of the traditional English garden, a lovely addition to your bookshelf.
Wilson takes us on a visual journey through various gardens Austen would have created for herself, visited, or imagined in her novels, all interspersed with photographs, quotes from her works and letters, and vignettes of engravings and poetry from her contemporaries.
We begin at Chawton Cottage, Austen’s home from 1809-1817, and the setting of the cottage and kitchen gardens that she wrote about so lovingly… “You cannot imagine – it is not Human Nature to imagine what a nice walk we have round the orchard” [31 May 1811], and then references to farm and parsonage gardens, which we see in Emma (Robert Martin’s summer house in his farm garden), and who can forget Mr. Collins day-long labors in his garden, much to Mrs. Collins’s satisfaction!
The chapter on Mansion and Manor House Gardens takes us to Godmersham Park and Chawton House, Austen’s brother Edward’s estates in Kent and Hampshire, Blenheim Palace, Chatsworth, and Stoneleigh Abbey [in Warwickshire] and the Vyne where “every park has its beauty and its prospects” where “one likes to get out into a shrubbery,” and we are reminded of Mr. Rushworth and his “improvements,” and the settings of Pemberley, Rosings, Mansfield Park, and in Emma, where the garden is nearly the heroine’s only place for solace, and Fanny with her own geraniums in her room (but she cuts roses for Mrs. Norris! …and a nice touch here … “Recipes for Mrs. Norris’s Dried Roses”)
Gilbert White's House, Selborne
Austen’s life in the cities of her times was confining, and one of her joys was the City Gardens. Wilson travels through the gardens of Georgian Bath, a variety of London’s garden squares (Henry Austen lived in several places in London and the areas surrounding these show up in her novels as the London homes of her characters:, Brunswick Square in Emma, Hanover Square and Portman Square in S&S), the garden at the Royal Pavilion in Brighton (where Austen’s characters visited, if not Jane herself), and the small town garden the Austens had in Southampton.
We all know that Austen was a self-described “desperate walker” much as she imagined Elizabeth Bennet, so her love of Public Gardens & Parks is apparent in her novels and letters: Kensington Gardens, St. James and Hyde Park in London, Sydney Gardens and Alexandra Park at Beechen Cliff in Bath, Box Hill (made famous in Emma), and the tours of the picturesque (as Elizabeth’s tour through Derbyshire in P&P), and Netley Abbey near Southampton.
Kensington Gardens
The chapter on Recreating Jane Austen’s Garden offers plans on the Chawton Cottage kitchen garden and flower border, the border garden of Houghton Lodge, the herb garden at Gilbert White’s House (in Selborne, near Chawton), and a Georgian garden with plans of the Kennard Hotel garden in Bath.
Gardens featured in Austen film adaptations closes the book with a list of the various real-life houses, gardens and parks that breath life into Austen’s stories…many are open for tours and how better to experience the places that Austen herself created for us than to take a leisurely walk around the grounds of these locations.
Wilson provides a bibliography to entice the reader with yet more books to peruse: they run the gamut from “The Formal Garden in England” [R. Blomfield, 1901] to Cowper’s “Poems” to “Hints for the Preservation of Wood-Work Exposed to the Weather” [J. Crease, 1808] and “The Juvenile Gardener, Written by a Lady for the Use of her Own Children” [London, 1824]
So this quick summary is of course lacking in what makes this book so charming – the many photographs, the quotes from the novels, the flowers! Ms. Wilson has given us a gift! I live in an English cottage cape, surrounded by what were once charming gardens…I struggle to keep them looking as I know they must have in some long-gone past, … I have many books on cottage and English gardening, perennials and borders, herb gardens, Gertrude Jekyll’s gardens, Penelope Hobhouse on all manner of gardens, even how to make an all-white garden … so this book is a delight to add to my collection, combining as it does my love of an English garden and my love of Austen….it is a visual feast, a good quick read that brings so many elements to the table…it is unfortunate that we are now upon the winter scene here in Vermont, and though I cling to my last rose struggling mightily against the frost that visits us every night, I can perhaps make some new plans through the long winter, or better yet, plan a garden tour through the English countryside next spring…or at least do a re-read of this lovely book……
So it continues…the question if Jane Austen really invented baseball [ see my previous post here as well as Janeite Kelly’s comment that indeed the OED cites Austen in Northanger Abbey as first using the term “baseball” in literature.] So all this banter can only take the usual cultural turn of appearing on Comedy Central where all things are given their just due. Thanks to David at Random Curiosity for this link to Stephen Colbert on Jane Austen Baseball.
Jane Austen in Vermont 