Day: December 15, 2008

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Happy Birthday Jane!

Today is Jane Austen’s birthday, 233 years ago!  To quote her father in his letter to Mrs. Walter on Dec 17, 1775:

“You have doubtless been for some time in expectation of hearing from Hampshire, and perhaps wondered a little we were in our old age grown such bad reckoners but so it was, for Cassey certainly expected to have been brought to bed a month ago: however last night the time came, and without a great deal of warning, everything was soon happily over. We have now another girl, a present plaything for her sister Cassy and a future companion. She is to be Jenny, and seems to me as if she would be as like Henry, as Cassy is to Neddy. Your sister thank God is pure well after it, and sends her love to you and my brother…” (Austen Papers, 32-3)

 

I have found “A Limerick for Jane Austen’s Birthday” by Lois White Wilcox,  published in Persuasions, No. 14, 1992 ~ this says it all!

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For the 233rd birthday of Jane,   

Let us make it perfectly plain,

T’would be most sagacious

And not AUSTENtatious

To praise her achievements again.

 

You who see through the fake and the twit,

At your feet (by your fire), we will sit.

As Janeites we’ll boast

It’s our privilege to toast

Our mistress of wisdom and wit!

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birthday-cake2

We had our Annual Jane Austen Birthday celebration last Sunday [and will write about this shortly] ~ Afternoon Tea and English Country Dancing ~ a fabulous time had by all! 

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Buy Local!

I am posting the following from Roy Blount, Jr., the President of the Authors Guild [see the original post at Authors Guild.].  It is an all-out call to BUY BOOKS this holiday, especially from your local bookshop:

Holiday Message from Roy Blount, Jr.: Buy Books from your Local Bookstore,  Now

December 11, 2008. I’ve been talking to booksellers lately who report that times are hard. And local booksellers aren’t known for vast reserves of capital, so a serious dip in sales can be devastating. Booksellers don’t lose enough money, however, to receive congressional attention. A government bailout isn’t in the cards.

We don’t want bookstores to die. Authors need them, and so do neighborhoods. So let’s mount a book-buying splurge. Get your friends together, go to your local bookstore and have a book-buying party. Buy the rest of your Christmas presents, but that’s just for starters. Clear out the mysteries, wrap up the histories, beam up the science fiction! Round up the westerns, go crazy for self-help, say yes to the university press books! Get a load of those coffee-table books, fatten up on slim volumes of verse, and take a chance on romance!

There will be birthdays in the next twelve months; books keep well; they’re easy to wrap: buy those books now. Buy replacements for any books looking raggedy on your shelves. Stockpile children’s books as gifts for friends who look like they may eventually give birth. Hold off on the flat-screen TV and the GPS (they’ll be cheaper after Christmas) and buy many, many books. Then tell the grateful booksellers, who by this time will be hanging onto your legs begging you to stay and live with their cat in the stockroom: “Got to move on, folks. Got some books to write now. You see…we’re the Authors Guild.”

Enjoy the holidays.

Roy Blount Jr.
President, Authors Guild

Addendum: Forward and Post!

December 11, 2008. The Guild’s staff informs me that many of you are writing to ask whether you can forward and post my holiday message encouraging orgiastic book-buying. Yes! Forward! Yes! Post! Sound the clarion call to every corner of the Internet: Hang in there, bookstores! We’re coming! And we’re coming to buy! To buy what? To buy books! Gimme a B! B! Gimme an O! O! Gimme another O! Another O! Gimme a K! K! Gimme an S! F! No, not an F, an S. We’re spelling BOOKS!

Yours,

Roy